PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Hodgson, Jarrod C.
AU  - Mott, Rowan
AU  - Baylis, Shane M.
AU  - Pham, Trung T.
AU  - Wotherspoon, Simon
AU  - Kilpatrick, Adam D.
AU  - Segaran, Ramesh Raja
AU  - Reid, Ian
AU  - Terauds, Aleks
AU  - Koh, Lian Pin
TI  - Drones count wildlife more accurately and precisely than humans
AID  - 10.1101/165019
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 165019
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/18/165019.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/18/165019.full
AB  - Ecologists are increasingly using technology to improve the quality of data collected on wildlife, particularly for assessing the environmental impacts of human activities. Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS; commonly known as ‘drones’) are widely touted as a cost-effective way to collect high quality wildlife population data, however, the validity of these claims is unclear. Using life-sized seabird colonies containing a known number of replica birds, we show that RPAS-derived data are, on average, between 43% and 96% more accurate than data from the traditional ground-based collection method. We also demonstrate that counts from this remotely sensed imagery can be semi-automated with a high degree of accuracy. The increased accuracy and precision of RPAS-derived wildlife monitoring data provides greater statistical power to detect fine-scale population fluctuations allowing for more informed and proactive ecological management.