Migrating Eagles Accrued a Huge Cellular Bill That Forced Scientists to Take Out a Loan to Pay For Them

Turns out, roaming isn't cheap.

Migrating eagles with tracking beacons that send texts reportedly accrued roaming charges so high that scientists had to take out a loan to pay for them, as well as attempt to raise money from a crowdfunding campaign — because some of the birds made unexpected detours.

Story via; BBC

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The birds left from southern Russia and Kazakhstan but for some reason, some of them flew to Iran and Pakistan

Scientists rang the alarm earlier this month when several endangered steppe eagles transmitting coordinates via Russian mobile numbers wandered into the roaming zone after spending the summer in an area without mobile coverage.
"These beasts were out of range in Kazakhstan all summer and now once they reached the super expensive Iran and Pakistan, they are spewing out hundreds of text messages with their locations," wrote Igor Karyakin of the Russian Raptors Research and Conservation Network.

Via BBC
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The journey of one steppe eagle, called Min, was particularly expensive, as it flew to Iran from Kazakhstan.

Min was apparently so far off course that its transmitter sent enough texts to eat up the entire tracking budget, according to the BBC. Min was expected to fly to Kazakhstan, where it would have sent a bunch of coordinates over SMS that it collected while out of range of a network. Those texts would have cost of approximately 30 cents each. However, Min apparently flew straight to Iran and the texts were sent from there, where they cost approximately 77 cents each. Come on, Min!

Via BBC
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The team had started crowdfunding on social media to pay off the bills

Scientists this week launched a campaign called "Top up the eagle's mobile" to keep the research going with the public's help after taking out a loan to pay for the text messages costing 49 rubles each ($0.77) instead of the usual price of 2 to 15 rubles. "They really left us penniless, we had to take out a loan to feed the tracker device," Karyakin wrote Friday. Bird lovers, however, have already contributed enough to last through the year.
After learning of the team's dilemma, Russian mobile phone operator Megafon offered to cancel the debt and put the project on a special, cheaper tariff.

Via BBC