Bio-boffins' feathers ruffled
after miscreants flip 'em the bird, costing charity a lotta złoty
By Iain Thomson in San Francisco 3 Jul 2018 at 18:44
A Polish charity is on the hook
for 10,000 złoty (£2,010, $2,648) after a tracking device it put on a white
stork was stolen in Africa – and its SIM card used to make a ton of expensive
phone calls.
The nature group Grupa
EkoLogiczna attached the GPS device to the back of the bird, named Kajtka, in
April 2017 while it spent the spring in Poland. The gizmo was supposed to track
the stork's progress as it migrated south to Africa. Kajtka made the trip safe
and sound, and on February 1 this year, it started north again for a European
summer vacation.
Ten days later, Kajtka reached
the Blue Nile valley in Sudan, and suddenly came to a stop. One could assume
was a dead stop, since the bird didn’t move again until April 26, when things
got odd for the scientists monitoring Kajtka’s GPS feed.
That day the signal took a
circuitous 25 kilometre (16 mile) trip, and then went dead. Then on June 7, the
charity’s mobile phone company handed it a massive bill from Kajtka. The group said earlier last month someone took the
tracker apart, and used the SIM card for 20-hours of eye-watering phone calls.
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