What Is Wildlife Computers' Mission and Track Record in Wildlife Telemetry?

Updated

Wildlife Computers Inc. is a marine wildlife telemetry company founded in 1984 that designs, manufactures, sells, and supports electronic tags for scientific research. Its stated mission is to promote environmental sustainability by creating technologies that empower data-driven decisions. If you are evaluating the company as a potential tag supplier for a research project, the track record below is the relevant evidence: four decades in business, projects in 72 countries, and thousands of peer-reviewed publications using its tags.

Mission and positioning

The company describes its mission as promoting environmental sustainability through innovative technologies that support data-driven decisions. It positions itself as a provider of advanced wildlife telemetry solutions to the scientific community, with an "unsurpassed commitment" to that community — a claim the company makes about itself, not an independent assessment.

Its self-described origin story is instructive: it began as a core group designing, manufacturing, selling, and supporting custom marine tags, then grew into a broader telemetry supplier. That vertical integration — design through support under one roof — is the operational model it still advertises.

Track record by the numbers

The homepage states the following figures:

Metric Value
Years in business 42
Countries with active projects 72
Tag shapes available 250
Partnering organizations 544
Publications to date 4,640

Two caveats when reading this table. First, "42 years" and "since 1984" are consistent with each other, but the page does not state an "as of" date, so treat the counts as the company's own most recent published figures rather than a live tally. Second, "publications to date" is a cumulative count, not a measure of study quality — it tells you the tags appear widely in the literature, not that any individual study was well designed.

What the product range covers

The catalog is organized by taxa and by tag family, which is useful for judging whether your study animal is supported:

  • Taxa served: avian, pinniped, hard-shell turtle, leatherback turtle, cetacean (LIMPET, finmount, and transdermal attachment), shark, fish, and penguin.
  • Tag families: Denali-S7 and Rainier-S20 (avian), Pop-Up (microPAT, MiniPAT, sPAT, Benthic sPAT, mrPAT), SPOT and SPLASH transmitting tags (including SPOT-F, SPLASH-F, SPLASH10, SPLASH10-BF, SPLASH10-F), and TDR/TDR10.
  • Custom extras: antifouling coatings, asset recovery, PRD-RP floats, LIMPET attachment aids, pop-up/towed attachment aids, and USB communication cables.

The company also states it offers "over 200 shapes and technology combinations," which is a slightly different figure from the 250 tag shapes listed in the headline statistics — likely reflecting different counting methods rather than a contradiction, but worth confirming with the company if the exact number matters to you.

Data, tools, and support

Beyond hardware, the company provides:

  • Data products covering archiving, transmitting, locations, environmental, behavior, activity, and time-series data.
  • Technologies including the Argos satellite system, light-based geolocation, and Fastloc® GPS.
  • An online data portal that captures, decodes, and stores data online and supports automatic retrieval by government-mandated data systems.
  • Tools and documentation: IGOR analysis software, a document repository, downloads, engineering support, repair and return services, and FAQs.
  • A tag-selection guide ("Which Tag is Right for Your Project") and a project information form for contacting the company.

How to judge reliability for your own project

The publication count and country coverage are the strongest signals here, because they indicate the tags have been used across many research programs and environments. To verify fitness for your specific study, work through these steps:

  1. Check the taxa list against your target species. If your animal is not listed, ask whether a custom configuration exists.
  2. Read the tag-selection guide and shortlist by data type (location, behavior, environmental, or time series) rather than by tag name.
  3. Search the publication record for studies on your species or region, and look at how the tags performed in the field — attachment retention and data recovery are the usual failure points.
  4. Contact the company with your project parameters using the project information form, and ask directly about lead times, attachment aids, and support terms.

The page does not publish pricing, so cost and any purchase or portal-access conditions must be confirmed with the company rather than assumed.