Drone technology offers unique wildlife insight

Forestry and Land Scotland’s use of thermal imaging technology to help in surveying deer populations in the Angus Glens has been trialled for other uses and yielded better than expected results – footage of a potential Scottish wildcat hunting… with a kitten in tow.

The imagery – thought to be the first thermal drone image of its kind in Scotland - was captured by Forestry and Land Scotland contractors, BH Wildlife Consultancy, which is run by team, Ben and Katie Harrower.

The cutting-edge technique makes use of a drone mounted thermal camera to more easily find well camouflaged animals in the wild, providing they give off a heat signature. Once located, the camera can switch to the daylight camera and can use a powerful optical zoom to get a close high-quality image of the subject. By marrying up the imagery with GIS data, land managers can build up an in-depth understanding of wildlife populations to support population management activity.

While Forestry and Land Scotland typically use this technology for monitoring the deer population, testing the technology’s potential for locating wildcats and getting footage of the hunting cat was a lucky bonus. The same technique has also been used to film another potential wildcat in Glen Doll, a location that is integral to FLS’ Angus Glen’s project. Footage of a third cat was captured in July.

Gareth Ventress, FLS Environment Forester, said; “We have been working with Ben and Katie for about three years on deer surveys and the results have been phenomenally successful in helping us to refine our deer management work. It’s also been useful in helping us to build our understanding of feral goats and feral wild boar populations.

"Following this success we started looking at other applications for the technology, thinking that it might have potential in searching for protected species in complex habitats. We asked more in hope than in expectation but Ben was up for the challenge and came up with some great footage.

“This spurred us on to make a more focussed effort in Glen Doll and that too came up trumps.”

Definitive wildcat identification can be complicated because wildcats have a significant history of hybridisation (interbreeding) with domestic cats. Identification is only possible through a combination of genetic and pelage scoring (which is related to their external appearance). NatureScot has recently issued new guidelines on reliable identification to enable the protection of the species and to ensure land managers, animal welfare organisations, conservation practitioners and others operate within the law.

The high quality images obtained via the drone allow us to assess the visual clues and pelage scoring so that we can make an educated assessment as to whether the cats are likely wildcats, hybrids (an individual with a mixture of wildcat and feral domestic cat genetics), or feral cats.