A Motus Wildlife Tracking Tower At the Top of Washington Mountain?

A Motus Tower tracks bird migration, stands 30 feet tall and looks like an old-fashioned TV antenna. Working with the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), the Northeast Motus Collaborative has proposed placing a tower at the top of Washington Mountain. Would it spoil the landscape if, as proposed, it is placed in the back of the meadow off West Branch Road adjacent to the forest and easily spotted from Washington Mountain Road?  That’s the question.

Motus Towers are important to scientists, especially ornithologists, because they help track even the tiniest birds, even some insects, on their migratory journeys to southern climes. Using this tracking system, scientists are beginning to figure out why over 3 billion migratory birds  have been lost in the past 50 years.

“Birds are about place,” the British nature writer Simon Barnes writes in his book The Meaning of Birds. “A bird is the place it lives in. It eats the place. It makes the sound of the place…. We often claim that a bird is the spirit of a place,” he writes.

We have many birds that nest here in Washington, birds that give us a sense of home. The valiant chickadee winters here;and when spring comes, we see the bluebirds, juncos, robins, tree swallows and barn swallows, rose-breasted grosbeaks, cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, hummingbirds, to name a noticeable few. They nest here, they feed their young here, the young fledge here. We notice them; some of us watch them. They give us pleasure and comfort in their reliability. 

But how reliable are they really? And where do they go. South, we say. The more knowledgeable might say the Caribbean, South America, maybe even Venezuela, or Costa Rica. There they define someone’s else’s sense of home perhaps. They fly off and slip our minds. Of course, ornithologists know much more.

Over the past thirty years, they will tell you, the science of migration has become clearer. The decline in certain species of birds—once a mystery—can, in some cases, be explained. This is primarily due to an advancement in the miniaturization of electronics, enabling the tiniest birds and even butterflies, dragonflies and bats, to be tracked by tiny transmitters or nanotags placed on their bodies.

  This has been a “game changer,” Scott Weidensaul, the internationally renowned ornithologist writes in his book A World on the Wing: “For the first time we have the ability to follow individual birds through their annual cycle of breeding, migration and wintering. This new capability has uncovered previously unrecognizable threats, in some cases explaining once mysterious declines in various bird populations.” 

The Motus Wildlife Tracking System has made all this possible. It was developed in Canada by that country’s largest bird conservation organization, Birds Canada. The Motus network has now grown to more than 1,200 receiver stations,installed from the Arctic to southern South America and increasingly in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. With Planning Board approval, a Motus Tower could go up here in Washington, joining the array of approximately 18 towers in Massachusetts, two of which are in Berkshire County, in Williamstown and Egremont, at the north and south ends of the county. A tower in Washington would fill in an important gap in the network.

Scientists have learned through the nanotags sending signals picked up on the Motus antennae how places thousands of miles apart are tightly connected by specific migratory patterns. A bird who spends the summer here might spend every Washington winter in the same place thousands of miles from here. 

The exact location of the 30-foot Motus tower being proposed for the meadow adjacent to the State Forest is being debated. The high, wide-open meadow is ideal, according to the specifications of the Northeast Motus Collaborative. Located on state land, there is access from West Branch Road for installation and maintenance and the meadow has the necessary 15 kilometer clear line of site in several directions.

When he learned that the tower might go in the field diagonally behind his property, Kent Lew put up a ten-foot pole with a pink marker on top to give folks an idea of where it might be and how it might look, minus 20 feet and minus the  aerial.

On Saturday, July 1, Carol and Kent Lew, whose field abuts the state land and Tricia and Dave Drugmand, who have an agricultural lease, also on abutting land, and who mow the meadow annually, gathered with a few town residents and Planning Broad members to meet with representatives from DCR and Todd Alleger, the New England Motus installation coordinator. Alleger works for the Williston Conservation Trust in Pennsylvania, builders of the radio network in the United States.

They talked about the Tower and its placement. Balancing the concern about marring an otherwise pristine view with an understanding of the value of the tower for the study of birds and insects—and, more broadly, our environment—they moved the pole around. Would it be better closer to the forest and thus a bit less visible (and slightly less viable for the function of the tower) or behind a small birch copse where the bottom half might be hidden, at least in summer?  The latter spot seemed the most popular with those concerned. 

Alleger says that often people who have the Motus tower in their community are excited about what is happening and feel: It’s a tower, but it is our tower. I am a part of this.

The data the Motus System collects is available for the public to explore on the project’s website, www.motus.org. Anyone can click on an individual receiver location, like the one here in Washington were it to go up, and check what has been flying through their skies.

So, come to the public hearing now scheduled on August 15 at 7:00pm and learn more about The Motus Tracking System and its possible placement in our town. Learn how your neighbors feel, share how you feel about it and help the Planning Board decide if this is something for our town.

What are the characteristics of a good receiving station site?

 1. Open area, higher than surrounding landscape, with clear line-of-site for 15 km in multiple directions

2. Minimum interference on target frequencies (166.380 and 434.00)

 3. Easy access for installation and maintenance

 4. Access to AC power source or southern exposure for solar panels.

 5. Low potential for vandalism.