Trust & Safety Position Statement

Spottr was designed with central consideration to key ethical priorities of animal welfare, privacy and safety.

World-leading advanced technology used by Spottr poses new trust and safety issues that must be deeply considered and genuinely safeguarded to maintain a social licence to operate. Through an extensive and authentic consultation process with stakeholders, we have listened and learned about the areas of concern to develop a system that meets these interests. Where we have seen ethical dilemmas arise between stakeholder groups we have tried to strike the right balance and will continue to evolve with the community and technology.

Australia is currently losing the war against invasive flora and fauna species. We hope to change this. Some examples: Studies show that the growing population of over 20 million feral cats in Australia kill over 1 billion native birds and small mammals each year. They alone are the main cause of the extinction of over 25 mammal species in the country. Feral pigs found mainly in Australia cause more emissions than all of Taiwan, equivalent to over 1 million cars. An initial breeding pair of rabbits can produce almost 4 million rabbits over just four years in ideal conditions. An initial breeding pair of deer can produce 16 over 4 years. Spottr is not a silver bullet but is the critical missing foundational piece to a multiprong collective approach to solving feral vertebrate species and invasive plants in Australia. Spottr is the critically needed low-cost per hectare effective monitoring and targeting system.

During our consultation process it became apparent that veterinarians, scientists, animal behaviouralists and related experts unanimously agree that ground-based precision shooting should be the most ethical and rapid way to manage rampant vertebrate pests. The time wasted hunting for these pests in the vast landscape is the limiting drawback to this method. Spottr will help fix this by drastically improving feral-per-hour-unit-effort. Spottr can improve the efficiency of, and eventually reduce the reliance on, the current main methods of baiting, earth moving, targetted diseases, trapping and poisoning management techniques, which are generally seen as comparatively less ethical and often unintentionally impact non-target native wildlife. Minimising suffering and unintended consequences is an overarching objective of Spottr.

Our consultations also considered other innovative feral control methods. Experts see gene drives as an interesting low-suffering potential solution however they are still well over a decade away and community acceptance as a result of the risk to non-target animals and related hurdles means it is probable that their widespread release could be a politically impossible barrier to overcome. We don’t have time to wait. Introducing new novel targetted diseases is seen as useful, but again highly unlikely to be able to achieve long-term sustainable population reduction, let alone extermination. Plus its generally agreed this approach results in a relatively higher degree of suffering compared to precision shooting.

Our research shows there is a very small but vocal minority of citizens that see some invasive vertebrate species, principally feral horses, as part of their personal heritage. They have strongly held beliefs that are unable to be swayed by evidence of the harm done. They see the wider long-term systemic costs to Australia and ethical concerns as largely irrelevant. Interestingly, this cohort generally has no concerns with removing invasive plant species from environmentally sensitive landscapes.

Spottr drones on domestic Australian operations will never be armed with kinetic projectile weapons, due to both extensive layers of domestic regulation and community feedback demonstrating this is a hard limit.

Spottr can network with automated sprayer drones to improve the delivery accuracy of herbicide onto invasive plants and desired positive liquids (fertiliser, pesticide, water etc) onto rare native and agricultural plants. Reducing the total amount of chemicals used in the landscape.

Spottr drones will adopt novel technology and techniques designed with animal behaviouralists to minimise, and eventually eliminate, negative interactions with birds, especially deterring birds of prey from mistaking our aircraft.

Spottr continues to advocate that government needs to better understand and regulate AI/Machine Learning to ensure the benefits outweigh the costs of this powerful technology.

Spottr runs a strict privacy protocol to manage data collection and encryption. It is worth highlighting that current surveillance satellites and regular aircraft regularly peer down into backyards and farms with virtually no privacy limits, we will be better than that.

Spottr will have a multi-stakeholder trust and safety advisory panel. The domestic Australia Spottr network will not be solely controlled by any major incumbent (industry or government agency).

Constructive feedback is welcome. Please drop us a message.