Canadian City Uses Drone To Chase Off Geese 196
LeadSongDog writes "The Ottawa Citizen reports on an enterprising private contractor who has been hired by a city government in Canada to drive geese off its island beaches using a small, remote-controlled drone. 'It’s proving amazingly effective, said Orléans Coun. Bob Monette. The place used to be haunted by as many as 140 geese, which can eat several pounds of grass in a day and poop out nearly as much in waste. “Now we’re down to anywhere from 15 to 20 on a daily basis,” Monette said. The weapon the city’s deployed is a “hexcopter,” a remote-controlled chopper with rotors that can hover, soar, circle and — most importantly — scoot along just above the ground, scaring the bejesus out of dozing geese. It’s operated by contractor Steve Wambolt, a former IT worker who launched his own business after one too many layoffs. “When he takes it out, they put their backs up straight and they’re watching,” Monette said. “When he starts it and it goes up off the ground, they sort of walk into a formation, and as soon as it starts moving, they all take off and they don’t come back until the next day.”'"
Re:Unconstitutional Drone Strike on Canadian Geese (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any idea how many millions of square miles in the US (much less Canada) are untouched by humans? Well over 90% of the US is undeveloped land. No, the geese aren't going to the "few locations untouched by humans", they're flocking to locations occupied by humans because humans chase away their predators and keep climate variations (especially during winter) to a minimum, to the point where many geese are no longer even bothering to migrate. Chasing them away from human habitations would do more to restore their natural patterns than to disrupt them.
Plus, geese are vicious bastards who'll attack and chase animals much much larger than themselves. And they poop like crazy.
Re:Unconstitutional Drone Strike on Canadian Geese (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps if humans hadn't encroached on their natural habitat they wouldn't be such a nuisance.
I'm going to just call you a damned idiot. The reason why we have so many canadian geese now is because the government back in the 70's instituted programs to reduce hunting and protect them. It's the same reason why you find deer in suburban areas, where the areas haven't expanded, and the population in the wild has exploded so much that they're starving to death due to a lack of predators. A very fine example of over populations of deer in the US: Michigan, and Ohio.
Up here in Canadaland, we have an assload of wetland areas. There are three in my area where the geese stay all winter, they never used to. They stay because the provincial government got this brilliant idea to feed the damned things all winter long. Carpet of goose shit indeed, we don't use drones here, we use starter pistols and blanks in shotguns and rifles to scare them away.
Re:Unconstitutional Drone Strike on Canadian Geese (Score:3, Interesting)
These things are a menace. I lived in Colorado and they would routinely plant themselves into our apartment complex public space, making it unusable for long stretches of winter.
If *you* think it's unusable now, how do you think the Geese feel about an apartment complex taking over *their* public space?
If you were stupid enough to wander into the park area, a host of them would waddle up to you and attack, and they left a huge amount of green goose crap all over the place. If I had thought of using one of those little toy helicopters at the time to scare em off, I would have.
I think the problem with the drone plan is that just like how the Geese got used to humans in your apartment complex and now show no fear of them, they'll eventually get used to the drones unless the drones start attacking and killing them.
Actually, they probably won't. The reason for this is that the drone is using a standard bird of prey flight attack vector. This should also be fairly successful against seagulls and pigeons (although due to the lack of flocking of those two birds, others will quickly return to take the place of those who left).
Re:"Drone" vs "R/C Plane"? (Score:4, Interesting)
this is a drone:
some means of operating outside of a line-of-sight controller (eg. simple AI autonomy, or a remote control that hooks into GPS or non-mounted cameras for control, etc.).
this is not:
has either a mounted camera
My R/C copter with a camera is not a drone.
When I automate it it will be a drone.
Re:Unconstitutional Drone Strike on Canadian Geese (Score:3, Interesting)
These things are a menace. I lived in Colorado and they would routinely plant themselves into our apartment complex public space, making it unusable for long stretches of winter.
If *you* think it's unusable now, how do you think the Geese feel about an apartment complex taking over *their* public space?
.
Actually the geese were not there before the apartment complex was built, building code in many areas requires a retaining pond for the down spout water to collect and naturally be absorbed into the ground. Geese love these ponds and will nest all around them.
Re:Unconstitutional Drone Strikes on Canindian Gee (Score:3, Interesting)
but simply scaring the birds by flying into the midst of them as they are eating and pooping and doing other bird things wouldn't break the treaty, as far as I can tell.
It's considered harassing wildlife and is illegal almost everywhere as part of normal wildlife protection laws.