Drones are disturbing critically endangered shorebirds in Moreton Bay, creating a domino effect

• With strict animal ethics approval, we flew drones towards flocks of birds in Queensland’s Moreton Bay.
• The exception was the critically endangered eastern curlew, which became alarmed and flew away – even when a tiny drone approached at the maximum legal altitude of 120m.
• But when the eastern curlew took flight, other nearby species were often startled, creating a domino effect that eventually caused the whole flock to take flight.

Yet another threat to shorebirds

• We studied a diverse group of birds typically found along coastlines, known as shorebirds.
• Heartbreakingly, their global population has plummeted as they continue to battle habitat destruction, sea level rise, disturbance and hunting.

Use with care

• They’ve been used to plant trees, deliver healthcare in developing countries, and have even proven useful for bird conservation.
• In some cases, they can even be more accurate compared to traditional ground-based survey methods.
• Shorebirds spread out across vast mudflats to feed, making it very difficult to survey them on foot and identify critical foraging habitats.
• The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service has already used our findings to place conditions on research projects and media activities involving drones.

Sharing the skies

• We also encourage those researchers considering adding drones to their conservation toolkit to carefully evaluate the risk of disturbance before using them to conduct wildlife surveys.
• By understanding how shorebirds react to drones, we can inform effective and efficient management actions.
• It was conducted under strict ethical clearance with the purpose of benefiting the birds with the knowledge gained.