using new technology
Predation control's 3 components:
- Prevention - using habitat design to obstruct the hunting success
of raptors and corvids, and to facilitate fox control.
- Monitoring Predators - gathering information to plan effective action.
- Trapping.
Monitoring and daily checking the traps are basically information gathering
activities, much of it repetitive work, taking the keeper on foot or by
vehicle over large areas, using up time which could be spent on habitat,
new trap sites etc. This information can now be condensed and sent by radio
or SMS (mobile phone) to a convenient receiver station, so that the status
of hundreds of traps can be checked in a few seconds at one stop on the
keeper's trapping round. So more traps can be run giving better control
of predators. Traps are connected to transmitters via a closed electric
circuit. This allows a signal to be sent that all is normal as the keeper
set it. Trap movement and the resulting loss of the `all clear` signal registers
immediately at the receiver as does any other defect such as flat batteries,
electronic malfunction and vandalism. So the systems are 100% fail safe
and an animal cannot be in a trap without the keeper knowing of it.
The status record of every trap every day is downloaded at the receiver
station by a hand held device and data from this is downloaded onto a P.C.
at the keeper's house or estate office. Information from the receiver can
now be sent by text message to a mobile phone. These records provide evidence
that all legal and humane requirements are met and they cannot be altered
or doctored by the operator. Where visual inspection is needed miniature
digital cameras can store pictures in colour and send them by email to a
PC.
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