News
The Department of Environmental and Coastal Resources (DECR) attends Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (DRONE) training
PRESS RELEASE
Department of Environment & Coastal Resources
Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands 2nd December 2024 – The Department of Environmental and Coastal Resources (DECR) Environmental Officer, Rebecca Hamel Pepin, participate in a workshop on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones), this month in Providenciales, alongside members of the Turks and Caicos Reef Fund, National Trust, RSPB, and School for Field Studies. This workshop was run under a UK Government project funded by the Darwin Plus scheme, that has been operating in TCI since May 2021.
The project is primarily focused on developing appropriate population monitoring programmes for seabirds in the TCIs, to provide up-to-date species and site assessments and recommendations for future conservation management.
The drone workshop was run by Dr. Rhiannon Austin from the University of Liverpool, who leads the Darwin Plus project and seabird work being undertaken in the Turks and Caicos Islands, along with Professor Serge Wich from Liverpool John Moores University (UK), who has a wealth of knowledge on the application of drone technologies for ecology and conservation. The week-long workshop aimed to provide participants with a broad knowledge of the applications of drones for wildlife management, land change detection and conservation, while equipping then with the skills to plan and execute ecological surveys with these technologies. The workshop covered everything from airspace regulation and safety, mitigation impact on wildlife, planning drone missions, and data processing and analysis. The participants gained experience piloting drones with support of the Royal TCI Police Force’s drone unit and participated in a bird survey on one of TCI’s remote islands.
The DECR currently use drones for a range of management and spatial planning tasks including beach profiling, site visits, and habitat mapping. This training will help our officers expand our drone usage and continue to gather accurate and efficient data on the islands. Plus, the expertise shared during the workshop opens new avenues for drone usage in monitoring and preserving our environment.