Australia has experienced its worst bushfire season on record. It is estimated that 800 million animals have been lost in NSW alone – with the national toll now believed to have exceeded the one billion mark.  Fires have always played an integral role in shaping Australia’s unique landscape. As a result, much of our flora and fauna have evolved to cope with the positive and negative impacts that fires bring. But this season’s unprecedented ferocity and size is testing our ecosystem’s ability to survive and bounce back.  In the days just after a fire, surviving animals are at a much […]

It’s been six months since we first received funding and to celebrate, we invited our investors to Canberra to see Wildlife Drones in action. For most of our investors, this was the first time that they’ve seen our system in operation and our new user interface. In the morning, Debbie introduced everyone to Wildlife Drones’ HQ at CEAT (Centre for Entrepreneurial Agri-Technology), gave a presentation discussing our company’s progress as well as a brief walkthrough on how to use our very user-friendly interface. We then performed a live demo, by flying the drone around a local field testing site to […]

Since taking on my new role as Marketing and Communications Officer at Wildlife Drones, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to go out on project demos with the team. Out in the field, I get to film and photograph the day, and sometimes I even get to encounter the wildlife! There’s something truly unique and unforgettable about being able to observe animals in their natural habitat. But I’ve quickly learned that finding them is no easy task. I’ve been able to follow people who manually radio-track wildlife and let me tell you – it’s seriously hard work! […]

“If we can just fly a drone overhead and collect GPS data without having to negotiate cliffy areas and Blackthorn scrub, it would save lots of time and energy and a few twisted ankles”. – Dr Don Fletcher In January, we had the opportunity to track Rosenberg’s Goannas in Namadgi National Park. It was a significant day for us as this was our first time tracking a ground-dwelling animal and the first time we had incorporated a GPS-download with our system. The goannas we were tracking were part of a project led by Dr Don Fletcher, a volunteer researcher from […]

With our recent move into our new offices within the Centre for Entrepreneurial Agri-Technology (CEAT) we are particularly interested in exploring how our drone tracking technology originally developed for use with wildlife and invasive species can also be applied in different contexts, such as within the livestock industry. We believe there is a growing need to understand and better manage stock movements as the human population continues to rapidly expand and the demand for land devoted to the production of agriculture and livestock increases. However, is it possible to strike a happy medium between the needs of growing livestock demands […]

In December, we had the fantastic opportunity to travel from one end of the country to the other to demonstrate our system to very enthusiastic crowds.  First stop was in Hobart Tasmania where we were invited to present at a Drones for Wildlife Management workshop for the Australasian Wildlife Management Society (AWMS) Conference.  A few key things we noticed at this workshop included: A wide diversity of people from government departments, universities and the environmental consultant industry have already embraced the use of drones for a wide range of unique applications and are constantly coming up with new ideas on […]

Last month, our science communication intern, Laura, went on a trip to Japan to study geological hazards. Read on to hear about what she got up to…   In early September, I went to Japan for a Science Communication fieldtrip with the University of Tokyo’s Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute (AORI). The focus of the trip was to investigate impact of geological hazards on Japan and how these can be communicated to the broader community. Our first week was spent mostly travelling down the east coast of Japan where we learned about the impact of earthquakes and tsunamis. This included […]

Animal movement studies play a key role in understanding how different species interact with their environment. They are also instrumental for identifying key wildlife corridors that are in need protection. An example of this is a study conducted by researchers from Elephants Without Borders (EWB).  They tracked the movements of 120 elephants in southern Africa using satellite tags and were able to identify a network of wildlife corridors which expanded across several African countries. They were also able to identify narrow and fragmented corridors near villages and other human settlements. From these findings, the researchers stressed the importance of establishing […]