The American White Pelican is a large, distinctive waterbird with a huge pouched bill, black primary wing feathers, and a wingspan of 8-10 feet. The Great Salt Lake in Utah is an important breeding habitat for these migratory birds and to help track and study their movements, beginning in 2014 the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) outfitted several dozen pelicans with solar-powered GPS transmitters. Interested readers can see the results of this effort at PeliTrack, a web-based map the Utah DWR created to visualize the pelicans' location data. This map updates automatically every few days, and viewers can filter the data to see the tracks of specific pelicans by banding year, sex, name (the pelicans all have names like "Elmer" and "Tabitha"), and date range. Upon initially accessing the map (and also after clicking "Info" in the bottom right), visitors are also presented with a link to a DWR blog post explaining how wildlife biologists attached the transmitters to the pelicans. PeliTrack provides data to "help biologists conserve Utah's pelican population and better understand their interactions with humans, fish, and other wildlife."
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