'Drone' used to watch over Britain's vulnerable birds

[Michael Szabo]

Corn crakes, Eurasian cranes and bitterns in Britain are being monitored using remote controlled 'drone' helicopters fitted with radio tracking equipment and thermal imaging cameras:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... able-birds

[Jan]

This is fascinating. I would like to see much more use made of 'drones' for monitoring birds in NZ.
If anyone knows of any work being done here and who to contact about it, please let me know.
Counting birds from aerial photos over Lake Ellesmere, for example would make census work so much easier.
Does anyone know how far away from the drone the operator can be? Presumably the signal dies out or whatever after a certain distance is reached.

Use for natural environment work is a real positive here. But many people would like to see drones banned altogether because of their use in espionage and warfare. It is a fine line that needs discussion.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

"Does anyone know how far away from the drone the operator can be?". This depends entirely on the particular device. The toys you can buy off the shelf in town might be less than 100m, while the ones Transpower is going to use to monitor the main transmission lines through the North Island have a 400 km range and I think are going to be operated from Auckland. And, as we all know, governments have machines that can do all sorts of nasty things while the operator is on the other side of the world. It's not hard to get one that has a range of some km. The legislation has to be tidied up here though. When I last looked into it a private individual could basically do what they wanted, but as soon as it looks at all "commercial" the operator needs to virtually be a licensed pilot, and the statements coming from CAA were inconsistent.

[Anne Rimmer]

On the other hand, can you imagine how annoying it will be if large numbers of unregulated drones start 'buzzing' the bush on Tiri, or the shorebirds at Miranda.

[Karen Opie]

Hi Jan ... and others,
At the Dune Restoration Trust annual conference in New Plymouth earlier this year, Hannah Buckley from Lincoln University gave a presentation on trials they are carrying out using drones to map sand dune vegetation. I'm not sure if they plan to extend this to bird monitoring but it may be worth enquiring about. I'm sure they must have had some interaction with bird life whilst mapping the dunes.

Regards Karen