Scouting with drones to increase efficiency of locating wild pigs for removal

Effective management tools are needed to control overabundant or invasive species. Wild pigs ( Sus scrofa ) are a destructive invasive species throughout the world and in many places are expanding both in abundance and distribution. Programs to control wild pigs often integrate a wide variety of management techniques (e.g., fencing, trapping, toxicants, and shooting) and additional tools and strategies are needed to curb their impacts on natural and agricultural resources. Our goal was to determine if locating wild pigs with thermal cameras mounted on unmanned aerial vehicle technology (i.e., drones) just prior to ground and aerial shooting efforts could increase wild pig removal rates. We examined removal rates of wild pigs, with and without use of camera‐equipped drones, to locate and relay their locations prior to aerial and ground shooting efforts during 2020 and 2021. We assessed use of drones by evaluating the presence of snow, type of removal activity, relative density of wild pigs in the area, and habitat type. We found that scouting with drones increased median removal rates of aerial (3.4 more pigs/hour, a difference of 1.3 and 4.7) and ground (0.2 more pigs/hour, a difference of 0.5 and 0.7) shooting efforts under low wild pig densities. Drone‐assisted removal rates were highest for aerial operations in areas that were more than 75% forested, had medium to high (categorical) wild pig densities, and when there was snow. Results suggested that using thermal camera‐equipped drones to scout for wild pigs immediately before aerial operations can increase removal rates. Also, scouting with drones just before ground shooting efforts could increase the probability of removing remaining wild pigs when at low densities. Future studies that use a design to compare the use of thermal camera‐equipped drones among treatments and across additional environmental conditions, while also documenting costs of adding drones to aerial and ground shooting operations, would help managers decide when and where it would be beneficial to incorporate them into efforts to control wild pigs.