New FLS CivTech challenge has deer management in its sights - Forestry & Land Scotland
Forestry and Land Scotland is working with CivTech to develop innovative approaches to improve the effectiveness of wildlife management and the health and safety of Wildlife Rangers.
The fourth collaboration – part of the CivTech Round 9 – involves two projects, each worth up to £650,000, part funded by CivTech as part of their Innovate for Nature initiative.
As well as looking to develop new technological approaches to wildlife tracking, FLS is also seeking ideas for better ways of transporting deer carcasses out of the rugged Scottish landscape.
Project Manager for FLS, Veronica Lyne-Pirkis, said; “Wildlife Rangers are indispensable for sustainably managing wild deer on Scotland's National Forests and Land. Managing deer is essential to protect new woodland and vulnerable habitats like ancient woodlands or Atlantic rainforest, and to help sustain habitats for a wide range of other species. It can also help improve public safety in some places be reducing the likelihood of road traffic collisions. However, a lot of a ranger's time is taken up trying to track and identify deer, or occasionally other animals such as feral pigs, through rugged and variable terrain. This is made all the more difficult because deer can become habituated to searching strategies and become more elusive. This makes finding them considerably more time consuming and is also physically and mentally challenging for a ranger. Our first challenge is therefore to develop a cost-effective way of letting our Wildlife Rangers identify the exact location of every animal larger than 5kg in a specified area. This will improve efficiency and reduce the demands made on the resilience of our rangers.”
A working system would ideally be able to give a ranger an idea of the location of the deer and other animal population in the immediate area while they are on site. However, a representation of deer numbers on the site within the previous 24 hours would still be useful.