THE news that personal locater beacons (PLBs) can now be legally used throughout the UK has been welcomed by NFU Scotland as a ‘potentially lifesaving tool’ for farmers.
PLBs (known as EPIRBs for sea travel and ELTs for air travel) are already available for use in the aviation and maritime industries as part of the existing licensing and registration regime, regulated by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency on behalf of the Department for Transport.
Personal locater beacons could prove to be a valuable tool to ecologist such as myself who regularly need to undertake lone working at remote locations.