PRESS RELEASE: How thermal imaging surveys can help Koalas

Although koalas are one of Australia’s most iconic animals, their populations are under increasing pressure with a recent 26% decline in population size from a range of threats including habitat loss, bushfires and drought.

Government departments and conservation organisations have been reaching out to Wildlife Drones to conduct thermal imaging surveys to determine the presence and abundance of koalas.

Monitoring koalas from the ground is notoriously difficult given challenging landscape conditions and their immense ability to camouflage themselves high up in the canopy of towering trees.
Given the extensive survey area and the challenges of using traditional techniques over such vast areas, rapidly surveying the site from the air using drone technology proved to be a massive time and money saver in covering large areas rapidly, and with great confidence

“Wildlife Drones’ thermal koala surveys were great and confirmed everything that I had read about the efficiencies of using drones for this type of survey,” says Kirsten Crosby
Technical Director at Biodiversity GHD. “The area that was covered over the five nights was certainly impressive, especially given it was a relatively challenging site to work on. The additional benefit of picking up heat signatures of other small animals and from hollows really opened our eyes to even more applications and possibilities for drone surveys in the future,” she added.

“The use of drones to create survey efficiencies was a really great addition to this project and allowed us to cover more ground than using traditional methods,” says Sarah Perry, Associate Ecologist at EMM Consulting.

Thermal drone technology is becoming an increasingly valuable tool for koala surveys.
Wildlife Drones’ specialised thermal drone pilots provide the ground crew with real-time visual and spatial data on koalas, as well as other species and landscape features present in the environment. The data collected is critical in contributing to the knowledge of dwindling koala populations in the regions and evaluating the extent of potential impacts of development on the species, now listed as endangered.

About Wildlife Drones:

Wildlife Drones is an award-winning startup that provides innovative drone sensor technology to support land managers and researchers in the collection of meaningful data on threatened and invasive species and the ecosystems in which they exist, paving the way for more sustainable land management in the face of global change.