Drones for wildlife research and conservation
Small drones can provide high-resolution data, be deployed at short notice, and are currently available at a reasonable cost, all of which makes them particularly useful for wildlife biologists. In this presentation, I explore the various scenarios in which drones contribute to the study and conservation of wildlife. The talk begins with a review of the most common use of drones as “flying cameras” that provide georeferenced images, enabling the detection of medium- and large-sized animal species and the mapping of their habitats. Several examples are presented, such as the study of raptor hunting ecology, the monitoring of waterbird colonies, and the fight against rhinoceros poaching in South Africa. Next, I describe certain robotic applications of drones, such as capturing insects—a group in alarming decline that is of significant interest to ecologists—and the retrieval of data from terrestrial mammals equipped with GPS transmitters in remote natural areas. Following this, I explain how drones can be integrated into sensor networks and combined with other technologies (e.g., camera traps, unmanned ground vehicles) to address complex environmental issues affecting wildlife in national parks (e.g., pollution events). I will then address some precautions that should be considered to minimize disturbances to wildlife when using drones, as well as the ethical considerations regarding the human populations inhabiting these areas. The presentation concludes by highlighting the most significant challenge faced by drone users in wildlife research: the bottleneck created by the vast amount of data generated from drone flights. I will also discuss recent advances in artificial intelligence that facilitate automatic data analysis, offering potential solutions to this challenge.