Latest testing of our AI triggered trap

This article summarises the testing of a new high catch rate AI triggered trap. We know that if you put a trap up a tree there are issues with animals just walking past. Our aim is to put one on a bush “highway” so that all the predators moving around the place got through it. 

We selected a spot where possums were regularly travelling 10-15 visits per night with the odd hedgehog and birds at either end of the day. Initially as you would expect all the possums avoid the new device even if put in the middle of a track. 

High Interaction Rate Trap with placed on predator “highway”

With a little bait and hazing (temporary fence) ALL the possums each day would go through the trap without the need to rebait the trap. They had become used to safely going through the trap.

Trap with some bait

Trap with hazing to guide predators into it

Now that we had all of the predators interacting with the trap we connected it to our DOC AI Cam and set it to trigger only when it saw a possum. For this experiment the blinds would snap closed but there was an easy way for the possums to escape (no our normal link to a live capture cage). The goal was to see if it would trigger for possums only.. 

We accidentally had an interesting natural experiment because of the placement of the camera it would easily classify possums on the way down the hill but not on the way up. 

The trap successfully triggered for possums going down hill and because the trap gave them a fright they learned to ignore the trap on the way down the hill (they would take a long route around the hazing and trap). Because the trap did not trigger on the way up the hill they continued to go through the trap on the way up. 

This set up allowed hedgehogs to continue to go through the trap without triggering confirming that the AI trigger is working (only activating for possums) 

The advantage of this type of set up is that it does not require baiting as there are natural scent trails through the device and it only triggers on select predators. It is more like fishing with an intelligent net rather than a baited hook. 

The DOC AI Cam can be set up to enable a trap when it sees a predator, or to disable it when it sees a non target species. This depends on the situation you're in. For example if there is a difficult to catch, fast moving stoat, you may want the trap on by default. But if there are extremely valuable birds like Takahe or Kākāpō then you may want the trap disabled by default.

We are currently endurance testing a new version of the high interaction rate trap so that we know it is more reliable than the initial prototype version. This AI triggered trap set up can be used particularly for environments with high value species that you can not afford to have accidental by catch. Perfect for reinvasion management and catching the last hard to catch predators.