Challenge 9.3

Why does this Challenge need to be solved?

Wildlife Rangers are indispensable in the ability of FLS to achieve its biodiversity targets, ecological restoration ambitions, and to enable the Scottish Government's response to the Deer Working Group recommendations on Scotland’s National Forests and Land.

Wildlife Rangers spend a significant amount of their time tracking and identifying a variety of animals, especially deer, through rugged and variable terrain. As increasing progress is made to reduce deer numbers to sustainable levels in landscapes where they are causing unacceptable ecological damage, this effort will become increasingly more difficult. Deer can become habituated to searching strategies, such as the noise of vehicle engines, meaning they can be hard to locate.

If an effective solution could be found it would enable greater efficiency of Wildlife Ranger time, enhance success rates per outing and promote the achievement of lower and sustainable deer densities via a better-informed culling effort.

Clearly, identifying animals larger than 5kg may well locate other animals — including people. So any solution must operate in an ethical way and be compliant with any data security requirements. That said there may be times when detecting people is desirable - for example, in emergency situations — and so this possibility should be considered in both respects.

How will we know the Challenge has been solved?

There are numerous factors which could contribute to Wildlife Rangers reporting back that they find the solution makes it significantly easier to locate deer within wildlife managed areas.

The overall outcome would be that increased culling efficiency in and around vulnerable forest crops would see improvement on either the impact assessment results and trends or the herbivore impact assessments that are carried out, so that more of them are restored to favourable condition.

Measured deer densities would reach the target deer density per hectare for each site as prescribed by ecological surveys and land management plans.

• “exact location” – in a wooded environment, no worse than 10-15 metre accuracy for all animal species because otherwise the system is imprecise enough that it will include the areas where deer will hide up during the day and therefore not be operationally useful. On an open range habitat the acceptable range could be larger but still needs to be within about 25 metres otherwise the Ranger may be tracking deer that are not within the property boundary.

• “every” – within a certain (still to be defined) accuracy based on independent population surveys which will be at a different scale.

• “animal” – the more information gathered about each animal identified the better (species, age, sex), but really, if there was a warm blooded animal bigger than 5kg then that’s adequate information for a Ranger because they’ll be able to decide what to do about it within the context of time, weather, management objectives and terrain. If the system can only identify larger animals (10kg+) then that’s better than the current situation but some of the deer species are very small so 5kg is preferable.

• “cost effectively” – the whole system cost of woodland management, not the value of the carcass compared to the cost of shooting each deer. Acceptance that price per deer is going to increase in order to increase the cull (i.e. to meet Scottish Government’s objectives), by making best use of Ranger time.

• “real time” – the closer to real time the better, but it has to be less than 24 hours to be useful.

Who are the end users likely to be?

FLS Wildlife Rangers and professional Contractors in the first instance. Equivalent roles in other land management organisations as a wider market.

Has the Challenge Sponsor attempted to solve this problem before?

FLS tries to stay abreast of developments in the field of game and wildlife management. Standard optic binoculars, high seat vantage points and thermals sights are used to help locate animals. Camera traps are not widely used. Bait stations are not used.

Thermal imaging especially has helped Rangers, but is still limited by the fact that line of sight will often be obscured by terrain and vegetation.

Camera traps and helicopter flights can be useful but they don’t provide live data.

There is an emerging market for use of drones but quality, cost effectiveness and weather limitations means that suitability has not been demonstrated. A solution that only worked in dry, windless conditions would be severely limited in application and unlikely to be adopted.

FLS tries to stay abreast of developments in the field of game and wildlife management. Binoculars, high seats and thermals sights are used to help locate animals. Camera traps are not widely used. Bait stations are not used.

Thermal imaging especially has helped Rangers, but is still limited by the fact that line of sight will often be obscured by terrain and vegetation.

Are there any interdependencies or blockers?

Thoughtful use of communications and language is good practice for all Challenges, and advice on this can be obtained from the Challenge Sponsor.

Will a solution need to integrate with any existing systems / equipment?

FLS tries to stay abreast of developments in the field of game and wildlife management. Binoculars, high seats and thermals sights are used to help locate animals. Camera traps are not widely used. Bait stations are not used.

Thermal imaging especially has helped Rangers, but is still limited by the fact that line of sight will often be obscured by terrain and vegetation.

Is this part of an existing service?

This work is part of existing and ongoing work within Forestry and Land Scotland.

Any technologies or features the Challenge Sponsor wishes to explore or avoid?

It is illegal to drive animals towards firearms using aircraft. Therefore any airborne solution that might affect the behaviour of deer while Rangers are operating would need to take into account related sensitivities.

What is the commercial opportunity beyond a CivTech contract?

Deer culling activities across Scotland, the UK and potential markets for wildlife tracking globally.

A successful solution may be adaptable to assist with rescue services such as Mountain rescue, Fire service & Police with the locating of human casualties in remote locations.

Who are the stakeholders?

The main stakeholder is FLS.

NatureScot have offered to provide operational help and support to the project in the form of site access and staff time as required to help ensure the success of the project.

Who’s in the Challenge Sponsor team?

Project Sponsor – Graeme Prest

SRO – Gareth Waters

Project Manager – Veronica Lyne-Pirkis

Senior User – Grant Carson

Consultant to the project – Josh Roberts

What is the policy background to the Challenge?

For full policy background reading please visit:

Scottish Government's response to the Deer Working Group recommendations.