Biologists Use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—UAVs—look like remote controlled planes, and Texas Parks and Wildlife fisheries biologists use them to map habitat in reservoirs and rivers for species like Guadalupe Bass.
14—For species like Guadalupe Bass, we’ve done a lot of research, we understand what their habitat needs are. They rely on these boulder complexes, or log complexes. And, we know about how much structure we need in different segments of river to have healthy populations.
Tim Birdsong oversees the habitat conservation branch at Parks and Wildlife.
12—By using this unmanned aerial vehicle, to map these sections of river, we know where we need to put our conservation dollars and our conservation actions on the ground to add additional habitat so we can support healthy fisheries.
Applications exist for this and other high tech tools in much of the work Texas Parks and Wildlife does. And Birdsong says technology like the UAV is a boon to overall conservation efforts.
16—The technology better guides our conservation efforts and makes better use of available funding that we have within the agency. And it also supports our ability to monitor effectiveness of our programs, and do some follow-up that we haven’t historically had time or funding really to be able to devote to those things.
That’s our show…with support from the SFWR program……..providing funding to conserve habitat for Texas sport fisheries….…
For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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