ID Tagging - in zoos and the wild -any thoughts?

[Nanook]

I will kick this off with my own thoughts on this.
ID tagging is usually essential in zoos and a very useful tool. But there are various methods, some far better than others, and some rather more necessary than others. In some cases they can cause injury and sometimes they can look awful to the observer.

Similarly tagging in wild animals, usually for tracking purposes and research, and can be both useful and sometimes detrimental to the animals.
I am personally happier with captive tagging than wild tagging, simply because wild tagging is generally not always necessary in my view and can cause other problems, sometimes the tags look ugly quite frankly and deface what should be a wonderful wild creature.
Are we humans interfering too much with the wild when it comes to tagging everything that moves, just for the hell of it it seems!!

 

[FBBird]

ID Tagging

If we didn't ring wild birds, we would know much less about their movements, and be less able to implement conservation strategies.
I agree ear tagging of hoofstock can be unsightly, but in some cases is a legal requirement, and is easier to read in a paddock/free ranging setting than a microchip.

 

[khakibob]

If you don't monitor you can't manage.

Ear tags are the best way to go for hoof stock IMO. Different colours can be used to determine different things such as year of birth etc. I always tag females in the left ear & males in the right. Simple but effective. I stick with one colour for a species or subspecies & start their number with that of the year of their birth, e.g. this year everything starts with 4. With this system I can quickly see if its a bachelor herd, a harem, if the old matriarch is hanging out with others, when animals have been recruited into the breeding population, has a herd split & do I have several mobs & matriarchs to work with,etc,etc. For monitoring purposes even tagging just a few in a wild population, will give an indication of absolute abundance, using the capture ,mark, recapture, or "change in ratio" method. It would be too slow, too expensive & cause too much stress on animals to have to catch them up every time someone wanted to scan a chip or do the several sets of data needed to create an indices.

Other than some sort of device which could recognise individuals in a population even after a decade, (then the operator still has to know how to use it) I can't see anything that could replace tags in managing non domesticated animals on the horizon.

Cheers Sharkey

 

[Steve Robinson]

If you don't monitor you can't manage.

I always tag females in the left ear & males in the right. Simple but effective.

We do that when ringing birds too. Males are rung on the right leg because males are always right

 

[khakibob]

We do that when ringing birds too. Males are rung on the right leg because males are always right

Thats exactly my reason too!!

Females are never right!

I just didn't wan't to derail the topic. LOL

Cheers Khakibob

 

[Nanook]

If we didn't ring wild birds, we would know much less about their movements, and be less able to implement conservation strategies.
I agree ear tagging of hoofstock can be unsightly, but in some cases is a legal requirement, and is easier to read in a paddock/free ranging setting than a microchip.

Yes absolutely, and true some tags - ear tags and wing tags in the case of certain released birds of prey, etc .. can indeed look unsightly, especially where we are talking about birds in the wild. I certainly have more of a problem with this kind of thing.

 

[Nanook]

If you don't monitor you can't manage.

Ear tags are the best way to go for hoof stock IMO. Different colours can be used to determine different things such as year of birth etc. I always tag females in the left ear & males in the right. Simple but effective. I stick with one colour for a species or subspecies & start their number with that of the year of their birth, e.g. this year everything starts with 4. With this system I can quickly see if its a bachelor herd, a harem, if the old matriarch is hanging out with others, when animals have been recruited into the breeding population, has a herd split & do I have several mobs & matriarchs to work with,etc,etc. For monitoring purposes even tagging just a few in a wild population, will give an indication of absolute abundance, using the capture ,mark, recapture, or "change in ratio" method. It would be too slow, too expensive & cause too much stress on animals to have to catch them up every time someone wanted to scan a chip or do the several sets of data needed to create an indices.

Other than some sort of device which could recognise individuals in a population even after a decade, (then the operator still has to know how to use it) I can't see anything that could replace tags in managing non domesticated animals on the horizon.

Cheers Sharkey

I agree completely, But I still do feel, where animals in the wild are concerned especially, that there is far too much tagging going on these days, some of it not really completely necessary if we are honest, and I have to say that some of it is done at the expense of at the animals own welfare!

 

[khakibob]

I agree completely, But I still do feel, where animals in the wild are concerned especially, that there is far too much tagging going on these days, some of it not really completely necessary if we are honest, and I have to say that some of it is done at the expense of at the animals own welfare!

I wish we had that problem in this part of the world. We have the inverse happening. Not enough time & money is being spent to quantify the habitat use, dispersal, recruitment, or threatening processes for more than just a couple of flagship species.

Cheers Khakibob