The initial reaction to UAS footage shot in their park from Park Rangers Mississippi National River and Recreation Area a was, “Oh cool, we should have this for programmes and surveys.”
But after discussing how UAS could be a safer way to get photos of birds or document birds for breeding surveys, but one of them was quick to point out, “We already have an idea of what a safe distance would be to test that out with an active bald eagle nest. And we would know what to watch for if the eagle didn’t like it and would back the drone off. Consider the average person who has a wide angle GoPro camera attached to a drone and wants to get as close possible.”
Here is the rest of a recent post on the 10,000 Birds blog:
I had high hopes that the operator [of the UAS in the above video-Ed.]was going to keep a safe distance away from the Bald Eagles in that video, but in both instances these the birds were flushed and chased. And if you do a bit more searching you can all sorts of people who don’t know anything about birds checking them out and getting too close.
Every species is going to do something different. What if the bird attacks? What if it makes contact? What if there’s an injury?
Then there are the other uses and a question of ethics:
Let’s say you know where Kirtland’s Warblers or Whooping Cranes are nesting and you want to document it with a drone…is that harassment? How often is too often for checking out the nest?
Can you use a drone to get footage of snowy owls in cornfields? How close is too close?
If you have a drone and fly it over a field and it finds a Short-eared Owl that you didn’t know was there and you only saw it after you uploaded your video…does it count on your list?
Is a regular flight of a drone over a wetland going to affect what birds nest there?
Say a duck hunter knows that the closed pools nearby has ducks and it’s dead in the pool where they are hunting. They call their friend to check the ducks with a drone and the ducks get flushed and go to the hunting pond?
You may think these are extreme situations but we don’t have great laws in place for drones yet. Oh sure, the FAA has some guidelines: don’t fly them over populated areas, don’t go higher than 400 feet–unless you’re near an airport, then be lower. However, looking on YouTube, people are violating some of those rules already. As the price comes down for drones with cameras more and more people will have these for personal use.
The human race creates technology that can mess with wildlife faster than we can know what to do with it, especially when looking at the glacial pace the federal government can respond to a problem. As has been said many time in the Spiderman series: With great power comes great responsibility. Cool things could be done to be less invasive when getting photos of wildlife or documenting them for surveys, but it’s all too easy to harass and cause damage.
Posted by “Birdchick”
Source: 10,000 Birds