Bat Tracking; the drones changing the way we can undertake research

S5E52 Steve calls in to Canberra, Australia to chat with Dr Debbie Saunders.  For over 20 years Debbie has worked as an ecologist and studied the movements of small migratory birds. This includes the Swift Parrot, one of Australia’s most endangered birds.

Like many small animals, Swift Parrots could only be tracked with tiny, very high frequency (VHF) radio-tags. This meant that in order to understand their movements, researchers would have to regularly trek vast distances with handheld receivers to search for each tagged bird, one at a time. But because the Swift Parrot is a highly mobile creature, tracking them on foot was a near impossible feat.

Frustrated by the limitations of radio-tracking manually, Debbie was inspired to develop a practical solution with wide-ranging applicability. Wildlife Drones is now an award-winning start-up that is currently working with a range of people across Australia, the United States and abroad to track the movements of some of the world’s most endangered species, including bats.

• Discover more about Wildlife Drones and find them on twitter, facebook and Instagram

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Transcript

Debbie Saunders: 0:40

Hello, you're listening to BatChat the podcast from the Bat Conservation Trust, where we take you out into the field to discover the world of bat conservation. Welcome back, folks, this podcast is for anyone with a fascination in the amazing nocturnal mammals that fill our skies at night. I'm still very professionally I'm an ecologist. And in my spare time, I'm a trustee for the Bat Conservation Trust. If you're listening to this episode on the day of its release, hello, I'm currently on a day long road trip to interview our first guest of series six guests. We are already recording the next series for you guys. So check out my social media, for any sneak peeks of where I am today and drop us a comment and let us know what you thought about this episode. A few weeks back, I got the chance to speak with Dr. Debbie Saunders who resides in Canberra, Australia, Debbie created the startup wildlife drones as a result of being frustrated by the limitations of manual radio tracking. The company is now working with a range of endangered species across Australia and the United States. But as you'll hear a European product is currently being developed. And so Debbie, thank you very much for joining us on Batchat today, what's it like over in Canberra? I've never been to Australia. So what's what's what's Canberra, like as a city for a start? Well, I think we won the award for the most livable city in the world recently, which is, that's pretty cool that I live in that kind of place. I really like in terms of rare able to move around on bike paths and you know, I can ride to work, catch the bus, what have you, every day, and I've worked surrounded by natural areas, and we have bats flying over our house every night. So that's a good thing. Yeah, well, it's kind of like a grassy open woodland environment here. And we're sort of in the Tablelands or mountains. And so we're not we're not on the coast, but we're not up in the Alps, either. So it's sort of in between. Nice. And so what's your background in conservation technology? Positive. I mean, we'll talk about the technology develops in a minute. But what which came first was there's wildlife or the technology.

Unknown: 2:46

I definitely wildlife. I've been fascinated by wildlife my whole life. Even when I was really young, I just koalas were the one thing that struck me initially, and but not just that they're beautiful animals and cuddly than cuddly. But they're amazing features, you know, their adaptations to the Australian bush, as we call it, was what really captured my imagination. And I've always just done everything I can to be involved. I've done Wildlife Rehab, from the minimum age, I just dived in and did whatever I could, I volunteered for research projects when I was at university. But not just for one particular type of animal, I'm really fascinated by all forms of wildlife. And so when I was at university, whenever I didn't know something about a particular group of animals, say frogs, for example, I would say I just go find someone who's an expert and go, Hey, can I come help? And they're like, Yeah, of course. So it's been great. And bats were definitely a part of that. And I haven't ever really been personally worked on that project myself. But through my business I now do work with, with bat researchers across multiple countries, which is really cool. And I have done a bit of bat handling and trapping, I did a course in bat handling in trapping at one point which, which I loved and we have done some trapping of birds that was sort of late in the afternoon, and we ended up catching a bat accidentally missing it. So have have done a bit of that.

Debbie Saunders: 4:28

And whilst back on session, like over in Australia, you know, what are the challenges we were talking before? Before we hit the record button about the two landscapes that we both live in? What are the challenges for you over there?

Unknown: 4:40

Yeah, so I think that's there's a lot of similarities globally, in terms of the understanding of bats and the appreciation of them in the landscape. Simply because they're, they're out at night, you know, people aren't exposed to them necessarily, and they get to appreciate them. Here in Australia, we have you know, the mega drop during bats, the fruit bats, and they often crop a really bad name amongst all cheetahs and the like for reading crops, what have you, but I the things that I see is the promotion of them, you know, their rain for their pollinators. I mean, there's they spread the seeds, and they're pollinators and in a really important part of the ecosystem. So I think that's a message that that has been put out there. But I think here a lot of people do have an awareness of wildlife. And we do have wildlife in our backyards all the time, as long as you have some vegetation, you generally have a bit of wildlife that will come into it. So we're very fortunate in that way. I think most people may not really understand that they're micro bats. You know anything about the smaller bats, or they haven't heard anything about them, but I do see them circling around wherever I go. There's bats at night, whenever I go camping or hiking, you know, there's always about to keep a company as long as it's not too hot, of course.

Debbie Saunders: 6:06

And we've got you on to talk about a new radio tracking system that you've tailored, which I'm really excited to hear about, because it sounds like it's going to solve a lot of problems for us over here in the UK. Where did the frustration lie with the technology that most of us are used to where, you know, you're tuned to one particular frequency, and you've got to stay with that frequency to track your individual?

Unknown: 6:25

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess similar to for bat researchers, I was at the time working on small migratory birds. And we might my research, my PhD research and my employment before that was focused on trying to understand the movements and habitat use of this migratory bird. And we've learnt a lot about where it goes in the wintering range, which was my my task and worked with the community right across eastern Australia to do volunteer surveys to help put the pieces of the puzzle together. But what really was unknown was how do they get from A to B? When do they get from A to B from a? And you know, what, what is it that they need along the way? Or do they just migrate and they don't stop? Do they need stepping stones, we knew nothing about the movements of this bird. And it's it was endangered when I started working on it. And then it progressed to critically endangered. And, and it's actually severely at risk of going extinct before my kids finished school, which is really frightening. So I really wanted to shed light on their movements. And because it's a major part of their annual lifecycle, and we knew nothing about it. That species is particularly challenging to tag unfortunately, was one of the other challenges. They have a very sharp beak and very adept at destroying things. But also they fatten up for migration. And so just attaching a tag with a harness, for example, was absolutely problematic. And it was too risky. Because the back can get entangled in the vegetation or in the nesting hollow that they're accessing. And so we weren't able to attach a tag in the way that you hear of a lot of tags being attached on migratory birds. So yeah, and some colleagues of mine had tagged Swift Parrots, which is the bird I'm talking about. And yeah, gone to a lot of trouble to get the ethics catching the birds, put the tags on them, release them to never see them again. And you know, you can't justify putting a tag on a critical endangered species that you're pretty confident you're never gonna see again, and not get any value back for that population. So before we could even apply to do any tagging, we had to find a better way to find them once we release them again. And this was a very long time ago that the idea came about it was 2008, I think, had that idea, working with another researcher who was working on lions, in fact, in Africa at the time, and we're both lamenting how we needed a better tracking solution. And anyway, drones sort of came up, I guess, in that conversation. And I'm like, imagine being able to create a high point review on it. Like that would be just a game changer in itself. And then you know, being able to manoeuvre across landscapes that you can't easily get across on the ground because of tracks and gates and what have you, much like the bird does. And so that was where the idea sort of spawned from and then it took years to find anybody to try and support a grant. And what have you. And eventually we did get some grant money, ran a research project to see if it was even possible because nobody had ever done it before on a drone. And there weren't many drones around DJI really wasn't a thing then. And so it really it was hard to find people who knew drones, and I wanted someone who knew drones already so we could focus on the radio telemetry side of things and get that really good. So we did a project and proved it was possible. So that was exciting. But what we also proved was there were many, many flaws in it as well. The first prototype that we developed we we couldn't checks with parrots because of the attachment issues. And so we just we did tag some local resident birds, though. So we were able to demonstrate on free ranging animals that this was something that could work. But there were many, many limitations. And then the money ran out on that. And so we got a lot of promotion, though, because it was the word first. And people that I want one of those two, and I'm like, oh, okay, I was just kind of doing it for myself. But that's really cool. It's other people actually feel the same pain as what I was feeling. So I then went off into a bit of a journey, I guess, from academia, and from working in government through to our local innovation network, where I went to them and said, Look, I've got this prototype, people seem to want it, I need to validate, you know, do people actually want it and I need to develop a new one, because this plan is not going to work. But I knew what all the flaws were. And I knew what I really wanted, as an ecologist, what do I What would I want? And what did I want. And so I just would have been go find engineers and others to work with me for free for a couple of years, while we validated the idea, and all the rest of it, and, and just see that there is really the demand there. And there was so we just continued on that, on that journey. And now, yeah, we have a product that is really easy to use, and has immense capability compared to the handheld receiver. And we have clients across Australia, in New Zealand, in Vietnam, and also in the US who are using it now. So it's, it's pretty amazing for me as a conservation ecologist working on one species for most of my career, to then be able to help people in different places of the world working on a real wide range of species.

Debbie Saunders: 12:27

When you said, you started with the idea back in 2008, I was thinking fairly short jet drones had hardly been ever heard of back then. So it must have been quite a challenge to find someone who knew what they were doing with them.

Unknown: 12:38

There are only Yeah, there were only two that I found. And one was there was a robotics lab at the University of Sydney. And they do all sorts of really amazing robotics stuff in the field. And there was another government organisation as well, but they really were completely reliant on students. And I'm just like, No, I just want a professional to work on it and get it done. We've only got was a three year project. But it took their full three years to really get to something that we could work with. Yeah, so yeah. And the first drone was, you'd had a maximum flight time of eight minutes and could hardly carry in. The world has certainly changed in that regard.

Debbie Saunders: 13:22

So how does this new technology work? You know, how is it possible that you can track 40 tags at once, rather than just one? What have you done to change that technology?

Unknown: 13:32

Yeah, so we have a radio receiver system that is essentially an onboard computer. And the similar type of directional VHF antenna. So that gets mounted on the drone. And there is a real time communication system between the radio receiver and a base station laptop. And so we when people purchase our system, we send them the whole kit. So we just kind of work straight out of the box comes in a pelican case. So there's a laptop and the payload, and it attaches to an off the shelf drone. So we don't make a drone. Specifically, this just clips onto other ones. And it you really just like clip it on. And this, at the moment, there's no real integration, we are building a more integrated model at the moment, which is smaller and lighter and gives you even more flight time. But it just clips onto the drone. And when you open up the user interface, it's like a big map, essentially, with some controls down the left hand side, and you just push start tracking. And once you push start tracking, the radio receiver is listening all of the time. And so then you launch the drone. And the first thing we always recommend is just fly the drone as far as you can, if you don't know where your target animal is, which is most likely the case for bats fly the drone as far as you can in the area where you think they might be. And the whole time it's in the air. It's actually displaying in real time, or for up to 40 signals across the frequency chart. So there's a there's a frequency chart underneath the map. So it's a bit of a brain shift in that at the moment you're out there with your arm in the air listening to the beep beep you know, and following that around. We actually don't hear anything so the computer does the listening and it maps the signals on a chart so you can see how strong the signal is in this chart. So So as you fly the drone around, if you can picture like a breadcrumb trail behind the behind the drone, those little bed crumbs appear on the map. And as soon as it picks up a signal, it lights up green. And so you can immediately see that it's picking up something, you can interact with that. So you can click on it, and you'll have a pop up. And it will tell you of all of the up to 40 animals that you have input the frequencies for which ones are you detecting at that point, and you will, and the output from that is like a CSV file. So you it's logging continuously while also mapping it in real time. So you can get this immediate picture of where the activity is if if the bats are moving. So you can do this at night, or during the day. It really depends on the pilots ability to fly and their authorization. But some people have used it for, you know, looking at where the better foraging and just seeing how far they're moving from perhaps a known root site. But then there's the other half of the people have like caught them while they're out foraging and want to know where they're roosting. So it can be used for for either of those purposes, but it's all in real time. And so it enables you to make decisions on the ground straightaway, if you do happen to need to go and observe that or find where that location is on the ground. So

Debbie Saunders: 16:56

with traditional technologies were used to get an A signal and then moving for a few 100 metres to then triangulate to try and pinpoint exactly where the batter's is that negated because the train is moving around all the time. So the training, triangulation work is working all the time, I guess is that how that in terms of pinpointing exactly where stuff is?

Unknown: 17:13

Yeah, so there's two different ways of using it. And this whole just how you fly, you don't have to do anything different on the base station, it kind of knows when you're doing one or the other. So if you're just doing this, what we call the searching mode, where you're just flying around, and you're trying to map out where we're generally you're getting signals for things. So then you can go and hone in more if you want to if then if they're foraging, obviously, they're not in one location. So you can triangulate because it's not one spot. But you can certainly build up a you know, I guess a bit of a heat map, if you like and where are the signals the strongest over time for a particular set of bats. But if you were looking for roosting sites, then yes, the triangulation would be where it where that comes into play as well. And you're right. So the drone basically does the walking for you. So if you were trying, you say you would do that searching to figure out where are you actually getting a good signal, because there's no you can't start triangulating until you've actually got a good signal. So once you know where you're getting that good signal, then just launch the drone and slowly rotate it. And it will listen for all of those signals in every direction. And based on the signal strength received, and it can be up to 40. And if you have multiple animals, you just instantly get multiple arrows popping up on the map saying this one's this way, these ones that way, whatever and, or they might just be in the one roost and they'll all be pointing in the same place. But you'll get an initial bearing. And then based on that information, you then manoeuvre the drone around, so you don't unlike manual tracking, where you're actually honing in on the animal, you want to actually manoeuvre the drone not towards not in the direction of the animal but perpendicular to that, so that you get the best intersecting angles for your triangulation. And you can just simply build that up by moving the drone around on different angles. And we actually put an ellipse on the map as well. So which is an error and error confidence. And to shrink the error, you manoeuvre the drone to be perpendicular to the long side of that ellipse to bring that error in. So there's lots of sort of guidance, I guess on you know, like, once you get this, you can do this and to optimise your data. And it depends whether you're looking for roots or whether you're actually trying to map out the area that they're foraging

Debbie Saunders: 20:20

on. That's clever stuff. So how how large are these drones have to be to lift your antenna then.

Unknown: 20:27

So the drones are a medium sized drone. So unfortunately, the smaller drone says that there's a couple of issues one, it doesn't lift the payload. So the payload is the radio receiver and the antenna. And that at the moment weighs about one kilo. And so that will be just the smaller drones won't be able to have any decent flight time with that. The other issue is and this is the biggest issue really is noise generated by the drone. And we're very fortunate that the first drone we picked was great for radio tracking, and it still use we still use it. But they don't make that one anymore. And subsequent models have been changed the way they manufacture them and they're very noisy in the VHF band So there's the specific models of drones that are suitable for radio tracking. So there is a DJI drone, which is the mitrice 210. And then there's also an American made drone called freefly, systems, Astro. Both of those are have suitable noise floors, so that you can listen for those tiny little tags that you put on that. Sorry, I don't know if I answered the size question, but the weight of these drones is around six or seven kilos, the medium size, sort of drone,

Debbie Saunders: 21:48

and what sort of flight time do you get out of those, then it's

Unknown: 21:51

around 20 to 25 minutes, okay. But then you can also pause the tracking. So if you do a flight, and you've just detected something, you can pause tracking on the interface, bring the drone back, change the batteries, and launch again, and then continue tracking. So you can actually track for quite a long time in a single session, you're not necessarily limited to the particular drone flight, and eventually, you know, we aim to get it onto a vertical takeoff and land drone. So that's like a fixed wing drone with some propellers. So it launches vertically, but then flies horizontally. And the capability in that space is growing, and that they can stay up in the air for hours. And so, you know, maybe one or two hours at the moment. And so that's something that in the future, we certainly would like to do that I think a lot of our clients would love that. There's obviously, you know, flight regulations that need to allow long range beyond visual line of sight operations and the like. But those regulations that they are advancing, and we have a lot of open space here in Australia. So I think we do kind of lead in that way sometimes, because we have areas where there's literally nobody, it's okay to fly drones further in those places. So that's an exciting prospect, I think, for any of these species that are really mobile and move across big landscapes.

Debbie Saunders: 23:24

And you've done stuff with bats in both the US and Australia, you want to talk about, I guess, the most exciting project that you did with those?

Unknown: 23:32

Yeah, well, look, none of them are mine. But um, I think there's, there's been a couple of like environmental consultants who do impact assessment work. Some of them are studying bats on migration. And, and they actually this is in the US, they were using piloted aircraft because they need to actually go over huge distances. So we worked with them to develop an adapter for the piloted aircraft. So they had to fly around in circles for every single back because they had to listen to one and listen for the next as you can imagine the expense of the aeroplane. And now they can just listen to all of them at the same time. So it's just a game changer for them. Here in Australia, we, we helped out with a project by the New South Wales Government. And they were actually GPS tracking the bats with a little radio receiver attached as well. And as GPS is so tiny, it doesn't transmit. So they needed to find the root site and recapture the bats to get the data. And I believe it might have been one of the first projects in the world to achieve that. So that was really exciting that we were there to help track those bats to the roost. And actually, so they could get that data and look at the foraging range. So that was an incredibly exciting, and I think there's a lot of there's a lot of work looking at disease as well. So the white nose syndrome in the US is having a massive impact. And so California Fish and Wildlife Service also using the system for for that purpose in terms of monitoring bat populations, and disease control and management. So that for me is really exciting that it can be used for for so many different use cases. And I guess another one is where the the roosting sites are being threatened with development. And so the route is going to be destroyed. And yet they know nothing about where the bats are going and what alternatives they have. And so tracking bats in that regard, was was really helpful and being able to search along sea caves, which previously was just too hard to do. And now they can just like take fly the drone out over the cliff and fly along. So that was pretty amazing. I mean, I wasn't there. Unfortunately, I would have loved to have been there to see that. But they sent back some photos on their work that they did on the sea caves as well.

Debbie Saunders: 26:04

Yeah, I know. When researchers and conservationists listen to this, they're going to be really excited. And the question that's gonna be in everyone's mind is what's you know, what's the cost of this if you've got a rough cost at the moment and you say you develop in it for The European market at the moment if you've got a rough cost at the moment,

Unknown: 26:20

yeah, so you are looking, It is an investment. But I think it's an investment in the saving of the people's time and effort. And it very quickly pays for itself. So in terms of like, there's, I guess that's the drone purchase, and then there's the payload purchase as well. And so you are looking at like a professional grade sensors and drone. And so the drone, both of those are roughly around $25,000. So at the full kit, you're looking maybe 40 to 50 things. And so yeah, that's the kind of price point that you're looking at, although, I think, yeah, if this is going out later, maybe I don't know if having the price in there in the discussion is going to be that helpful, because it might not be relevant at that point.

Debbie Saunders: 27:12

Yeah, politely say, even though it's, even though it's an investment, I guess you're saving people's time, in terms of man hours on the ground, I guess.

Unknown: 27:21

It is, and I think that time, it's interesting, right? So it depends on on what, how you go about it. And, you know, if you have people who volunteer and are really happy to go out and do it manually, then you know, you can still do that. And, and that's fine. We just, you know, there's, it depends on what it's costing you at the moment as to how much of a value proposition that is, the other side of it is, a lot of our clients say we just have, we just can't even get any data. And so it's not actually even just about the time that people are spending on the ground, but actually getting something so that you have something to work with. And if you can't ever find them again, if you tag them, release them and never find them again, I mean, just the the man hours going into the ethics to do that come out with nothing is heartbreaking. I've been there and done that. So I think, yeah, and you know, we can, we can help people with that as well. Like, if people are wanting to do this type of work, some people have access to like drone pilots, or they might, you know, be able to work together. We have other like NGOs that go in together and purchase a system and use it across multiple projects and the like. And so there are those things that are available. And we do sometimes also provide information to people who are applying for grants on you know, what are some of the benefits of that, and actually weighing up the pros and the cons. And it really depends on the context, you know, as where people are working? Are they in a dense rainforest where launching a drone is problematic, you know, we don't want it has to be has to be fit for purpose. And it may be that not every application is fit, but for a lot of them and for bats. They're hard, right? You know, I work on small birds, but that's a harder again, they're smaller. But now, you know, we're also tracking insects now. So we're tracking giant hornets in the US. And it's a similar size tag is to what you put on a bat. And so you know, the capabilities there and you can actually collect more data and get more insights on things that were not previously possible. So it's pretty exciting in that regard.

Debbie Saunders: 29:50

And just final question, then. So I guess, I mean, obviously, you guys are using it. How do you see the use of drones in wildlife conservation moving forward? Do you think it just going to increase the the sort of technology becomes available?

Unknown: 30:03

Absolutely. Like I think the thing is, once once you've even taken that step of getting a pilot's licence, buying a drone, like there is a commitment that is required. It's not just a quick fix kind of thing. And you need to develop your skills in the best way of flying and optimising data collection, etc. Much like any research technique, the more you do it, the better you get at it. And but once you take to the skies, for me, I mean, I I've never flown a drone, I'd never find anything before I started on this journey. And but it got to a point where with the research project, everyone else did the flying or what have you. And I was just there like advising on what I wanted to see happen. But then I realised that you know, I actually need to see what it takes to actually do this myself. I can't expect other people to if I haven't been through it. And so then I went and got my licence. And then I became a commercial pilot and now I employ pilots and have a business and I like I never imagined this when I used to go birdwatching is my job. Yeah, so I think when I first did take to the skies, just having that different perspective on the world, there's a whole new A lot of data out there that we've never collected as well. And applications for all different types of species changes in habitat over time monitoring of all sorts of environmental factors from the air, whether it be invasive species impacts, or in a habitat changes over time, that the potential is immense. And it's really captivating. And it's also, I think, a really important engagement tool for the community. I think a lot of people are appreciative now of drones, for good applications, there are a lot of good things, you always hear the horror stories out there. But as it gets used more and more, there's a lot more work going into the ethics of using drones. And our application is probably one of the most well, it is one of the most ethical applications in that we actually don't want to follow an animal or get close to an animal, we want to track it from a distance, and we can because we're listening, whereas most other drone applications are visual, and it requires you to be overhead or nearby to that animal in order to capture any sort of information. So from an ethical point of view, it's actually less invasive, to have to be using a drone than it is sometimes to be doing it using more traditional techniques.

Debbie Saunders: 32:40

And like you say, if you're able to get more data reliably, then the justification of of attaching a tag and doing that invasive behaviour in the first places, is even more worthwhile, isn't it? So yeah, that's great. I know that lots of people are listening. I know the last people listening to this will be really excited to hear about this. So thank you very much for coming on the show. Dr. Debbie Saunders, thank you very much.

Unknown: 33:00

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to getting our technology over to Europe and Africa and other parts of the world where we haven't been able to deliver yet. But yeah, keep your eyes peeled for that later this year.

Debbie Saunders: 33:15

Brilliant, great stuff. Thank you very much.

Unknown: 33:17

Thank you.

Debbie Saunders: 33:19

Thank you to Debbie. For that insight. We've put a link in the show notes to the wildlife drones website. So if you'd like to find out more, check out the link. We'll be back in two weeks time with someone who created a product in the 80s which changed the world of Bat Conservation forever. Catch you then