In addition UAVs have been used for census surveys (He et al., 2020 Linchant et al., 2018 Vermeulen et al., 2013 Ratcliffe et al., 2015), for anti-poaching surveillance (Marks, 2014 Mulero-Pazmany et al., 2014), for mapping species habitat use and distribution (Goebel et al., 2015 Koh & Wich, 2012 Perryman et al., 2014 Szantoi et al., 2017 van Andel et al., 2015), for locating radio-tagged animals (Muller et al., 2019), for assessing species body mass and condition (Christiansen et al., 2019 Krause et al., 2017), for relocating animals to mitigate human–wildlife conflict (Hahn et al., 2017 Schiffman, 2014) and for kinematic analysis (i.e. blow samples from whales Acevedo-Whitehouse et al., 2010 Dominguez-Sanchez et al., 2018 Geoghegan et al., 2018 Pirotta et al., 2017), monitoring morphometric attributes (Burnett et al., 2019) and collecting behavioural data (Fiori et al., 2020 Graving et al., 2019). Recent applications include gathering biological samples (e.g. The introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is revolutionising the study of wildlife. The methodology is readily applicable to other species and UAV systems for which sound recordings and audiograms are available. Reliable data on appropriate flight altitudes can guide policy regulations on flying UAVs over wildlife, thus enabling increased use of this technology for scientific data collection and for wildlife conservation purposes.The latter is quantified as the point above which each additional 5 m of flight altitude causes on average less than 0.05 dB decrease in sound pressure level. We calculated the lowest point at which either the UAV sound level decreases below an acceptable threshold, here chosen as 40 dB, weighted according to species’ hearing sensitivity, or disturbance cannot be significantly further minimised by flying higher. We have devised a method to optimise the trade-off between image spatial resolution and flight altitude.These calculations filter the UAV noise based on the sensitivity of species’ hearing over the relevant frequency spectrum. To understand how mammals perceive UAV sound, we used audiograms of 20 species to calculate the loudness of each UAV for each species across the measured distances. We recorded sound profiles of seven common UAV systems in the horizontal and vertical planes at 5-m increments up to 120 m. Here we present a novel method to determine optimal flight altitude for minimising drone disturbance for wildlife using species audiograms.Dealing with the issue of disturbance will enable wildlife researchers to use UAV technology more effectively and ethically.
Disturbance is an animal welfare concern and impedes scientific data collection through provoking aberrant behaviour. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly important in wildlife data collection but concern over wildlife disturbance has led several countries to ban their use in National Parks.
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