New cutting edge technology is being developed that will use space satellites, aerial imagery and AI to track and count wild deer in Perth and Kinross and across Scotland.
The project, headed up by NatureScot and Glasgow-based tech company EOLAS Insight, aims to better determine how to manage populations for conservation or sporting purposes.
High numbers and a lack of natural predators mean deer can have a negative impact by over-browsing on woodlands and other habitats.
NatureScot and EOLAS Insight are launching a second phase of research, which will further explore the use of aerial imagery.
This involves images from a lightweight manned aircraft, with a high resolution camera system, being run through the EOLAS Insight AI recognition software to automatically count deer numbers.
The first phase was so successful that the same technology is now being used by EOLAS Insight to help conservationists count African elephants from space.
It is hoped this approach could overcome some of the challenges of satellite use in Scotland, including weather and cloud cover.
While satellites can provide broad overall numbers, a higher camera resolution could allow deer to be classified as stags, hinds, calves and could also be more useful for looking at habitat type and condition.
With many deer counts currently carried out manually by helicopter, new technologies offer an alternative solution that could provide swift and accurate data across large areas while helping to reduce carbon footprint and cost.
Lightweight manned aircraft are still significantly greener than helicopters and can cover larger areas.
The automation process could also be applied to aerial imagery that is routinely collected for other agencies, such as Ordnance Survey.
NatureScot’s regional deer operational delivery manager Jamie Hammond said: “Our trials with satellite imagery have been successful so far, particularly at finding deer in the wider landscape and providing data on total numbers.
“The AI technology that EOLAS has developed has proved that an image recognition system is feasible
“However there are some challenges and limitations, particularly with the Scottish weather as cloud cover and haze can have a negative effect on image quality.
“We’re hopeful that this alternative approach, with better image resolution, will improve the accuracy further and could even identify and classify deer as stags, hinds and calves.
“While we’re not yet at the stage of being able to replace helicopters for the deer census, the technology we’ve been trialling has huge potential.
“We hope that in the near future these approaches could provide an alternative solution to count deer accurately while cutting our carbon footprint and costs.”
The innovative research is supported through the Scottish Government’s CivTech programme.
