I know what you did last summer - High resolution mapping of wild boar damages with drones

Wild boar ability to cause important damages to agricultural lands is not anymore to be demonstrated. These damages often raise conflicts between farmers and hunters due to the associated economic losses. Objective and accurate method for real impact assessment of losses suffered by farmers is thus needed. Currently,in Wallonia damage assessment is performed from the ground by experts, asked to evaluate precisely the area impacted. This task is time and man power consuming. Moreover, damaged areas are often large and consequently, sampling is mandatory and can induce accuracy issues.

Recent development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV / drone) toghether with lower cost and better accessibility for civil society and scientific community, makes now possible the use of this technology for wildlife researches. Through photogrammetric 3D reconstruction of the field crop, UAV can allow to objectively and precisely measure the area impacted by wild boar damages.

In a context of increasing issues caused by wild boar to agriculture, and the need for stakeholders for accurate impact assessment, we tested an innovative approach to estimate more effectively the area impacted by wild boar.