TThe first time Terry Vandenbos saw a bear run away from a drone was on a spring day two years ago when he was chasing a bear himself. After seeing a grizzly bear cross a road near his property, a Montana rancher hopped in his all-terrain vehicle and planned to chase it away from his cattle if necessary.
However, when the bear was still far away from him, he began to sprint as fast as he could, looking over his shoulder, and Vandenbos also looked up. A small drone was chasing the bear overhead, its four propellers emitting a high-pitched whine as it flew toward a nearby lake.
“I don’t think I need to be here,” Vandenbos remembers thinking. He drove home. The bear never touched the cow.
At the other end of the drone was Wesley Sarmento, a grizzly bear management specialist with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MFWP). For the past six years, he has been testing various non-lethal methods to scare bears away from human settlements. An act commonly referred to as “hazing.”
Sarmento, a doctoral student at the University of Montana, said in a study to be published in the journal Frontiers of Conservation Science that aerial drones outperformed all other hazing methods he tested in his experiments. These provide a way to keep grizzly bears away from humans that is safe for both humans and animals.
“Drones are now a tool that you can’t do your job without,” Sarmento said. “That’s how convenient it is.”
Increase in human-wildlife conflict
For nearly two centuries, prairies like those around Vanden Bosch Farm in northeastern Montana have had few large predators.
“The really good news is that we’ve done a good job recovering some of the large carnivores,” said Julie Young, a Utah State University wildlife biologist who studies ways to reduce human-wildlife conflicts.
Source: www.theguardian.com
