MONITORING TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR ...

MONITORING TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT OF VERTEBRATE PESTS. 1

David Berman, 1Darren Marshall, 1Tom Garrett, 1John Scriven, 1Nathan Morgan, 1Holly Hosie, 2 Magdalena Zabek 1 Queensland Murray Darling Committee, Toowoomba, QLD 4350 2 University of Queensland, School of Veterinary Science, Gatton QLD 4343, Australia

Vertebrate pest animals cause environmental and economic damage. Many pest species also have positive impacts. Intelligent management of vertebrate pests involves actions that minimise the damage and maximise the positive impacts. Such management requires accurate monitoring of population density and levels of impact. Unfortunately this can be difficult and expensive and is often done poorly or not at all. It is common for pest animals to be "controlled" (trapped, shot or poisoned) with no idea of the reduction in population size let alone the reduction in damage achieved. This paper discusses potential new or improved options for monitoring vertebrate pest density. Movement sensing cameras have become very useful tools for vertebrate pest management. Most often users set the cameras to take a photograph when triggered by animal movement within 15 m of the front of the camera. The time-lapse option on these cameras is not often used but may reduce the bias associated with camera angle or height and variability of movement sensing. Cameras can be set to photograph areas up to four hectares at regular intervals. Each photograph is a measure of the actual density of visible pest animals or wildlife at that place. A camera set in this way provided a good estimate of the density of a known number of domestic horses in a paddock. Also, in the field, time-lapse photography provided reasonable density estimates for feral horses. Since the distance viewed by movement sensing cameras at night is limited, we tried thermal imaging cameras set continuously filming through the night and we were able to distinguish feral pigs over 200 m away. Small quadcopters/drones mounted with video or thermal imaging cameras are also being considered as a means to survey rabbits, feral pigs or feral horses. Sniffer dogs are being tested as a method for monitoring secretive and very low-density pest species such as cats and rabbits. The techniques discussed here have potential to provide better estimation of actual density of vertebrate pests even when density is very low. This is important because for some species it is necessary to push the population to very low levels to achieve an acceptable level of damage reduction. Estimating the actual number of individual pests at both low and high density provides us with greater ability to monitor the success of control activities and assign economic benefits. Further work is required to develop these techniques so that they are easy to use and provide accurate measures of the success of vertebrate pest control activities.