WHEN DRONES AND WILDLIFE CLASH

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WHEN DRONES AND WILDLIFE CLASH
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• Drones are making technological advances with
  every passing year and are increasingly being
  used for many professional and important
  services, as well as for recreational purposes.
  While there are restrictions in place that limit
  where recreational drone pilots can fly their
  UAVs, there is little to stop them from being
  flown wherever there is open sky, and in whatever
  places the pilot can access by foot. In most
  cases, drones are flown respectfully and without
  causing harm to anyone or anything, but recent
  footage of a brown bear and her cub shot on the
  coast of Russia, has had people asking whether
  there ought to be limits to drone usage where
  wildlife is involved.

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• What did the footage show?
• The drone footage, shot by amateur photographer
  Dmitry Kedrov off Russias coast on the Sea of
  Okhotsk, shows a brown bear cub trying in earnest
  to scale the steep heights of a dangerously snowy
  slope. The cub repeatedly falls back down to
  where it started from, with its mother keeping
  watch and urging him to reach the peak where
  shes waiting for him.
• Many of those viewing the footage for the first
  time, saw what appeared to be the mother bear,
  reaching out her paw to help her cub reach the
  peak.

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• Millions thought how cute the images were,
  believing them to be showing the determination of
  both the mother and her cub to reach the top of
  the snowy slope. Little did they realise the
  truth behind the video.
• What did the footage really show?
• Watch the video again, however, and what youll
  see is in fact something quite different and more
  disturbing.
• The footage of the bears has obviously been
  captured by a drone, and while it may look as if
  the mother bear was extending her paw to help her
  cub, she may in fact, have been taking a swipe at
  the drone that she doubtless feared may harm her
  or her precious offspring.

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• Although in swiping at the drone she had
  inadvertently sent her cub careening back down
  the slope, thankfully he managed to clamber back
  up to safety, but her actions could so easily
  have had deadly results for the vulnerable cub.
• What do the experts have to say about it?
• While the footage has a happy ending, many
  scientists and wildlife experts have expressed
  their consternation over the video and the way it
  was filmed, arguing that the drone zoomed in far
  too close to the wild animals at one point, and
  that the mother bear even looked directly at the
  device and took a swipe at it, causing the cub to
  take a treacherous tumble.

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• What did the drone operator have to say about it?
• Drone pilot, Kedrov, insists that the effect he
  achieved through zooming in on the bears, was
  completed after the footage was taken and that
  his drone caused no obvious distress to the
  animals, but experts arent so sure.
• Some experts have agreed that it could be a zoom
  function on the video camera built in to the
  drone, but with recreational or consumer drone,
  most do not have the payload capacity to come
  equipped with a camera and high-quality zoom lens.

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• Drones, when flown responsibly, can be wonderful
  tools with many roles to play in modern life, but
  taking advantage of their versatility and using
  them for purposes that may be detrimental to the
  lives of the creatures we share this planet with,
  is perhaps not so wonderful and we should
  exercise our rights to fly them with caution.
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