Science in the Society : Saving Wildlife

In addition, living in a suburban neighborhood in the evergreen state of Washington, I see roadkill very regularly, and it is a tragedy that needs to be stopped. I researched the problem of roadkill, its causes, and the impact it creates on biodiversity and ecological balance. I combined this motivation with my passion for technology, and have been working relentlessly to eliminate roadkill. Looking at roadkill I learned about other problems in the field of ecological conservation. 

One of them involves mountain lions entering livestock pens and stealing animals. This forces the farmers to harm the mountain lions in order to protect their own livestock. To solve this problem without harming the livestock or the mountain lions, I developed a device called Ora that uses radio frequency-based motion sensors to detect the presence of mountain lions near livestock pens and then deter these lions from entering the pen. I have deployed this device in Southern California and have been refining the design with inputs from the field.

How much would an Ora setup cost to be put up?

Ora is about $100, and it has a range of upwards of 500 feet on either side of a straight road. The cost comes out to approximately $600 per mile compared to fencing which is $100,000 per mile and animal bridges which can be upward of $4 million. A road equipped with Ora acts like a virtual fence allowing animals to pass when there is no danger from cars but warns them when there are vehicles approaching.

There are some existing products in this space. What are the shortcomings that you are trying to overcome?

The main problem with other virtual fence solutions is habituation. This is where the animal eventually gets used to the sounds and light emitted by the solution over time. This is primarily due to using tonal beeps and single light patterns. I overcame potential habituation with Ora by using light patterns that vary constantly and colors that are tuned to fit the animal’s visual spectrum. For example (deer are more reactive to light in the blue to green wavelength).

Looking at audio, I use predatory noises like wolf howls and bear growls to deter prey animals, as studies have proven they are more susceptible to that, and also these sounds stay effective for much longer timeframes compared to tonal beeps. I also randomly cycle through the audio files.

Where has this product been recognized? Which organizations have supported your work?

I presented Ora at the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation in September of 2021 and received interest from people in several states in the US and even Sweden. I won the Student Aspiration Award (best presentation amongst all students– including doctoral students) at this conference and I am the only high schooler to ever have participated in the conference. 

Ora also won first place in the category of environmental engineering at the Central Sound Regional Science and Engineering Fair and Washington state science and engineering fair in 2021. I am also doing an internship at UC Davis Dr. Fraser Shilling and have done a lot of machine learning work directed at eliminating the problem of roadkill.

 

My work has been supported by several departments of transportation including Nevada and the UC Davis Road Ecology Center.

If these innovations became popular how do you plan to scale their deployment?

To scale Ora I started my own company, IyarkAI. I have outsourced my manufacturing to a contract hardware shop in Kerala, India and currently working through design for manufacturing processes. There is another variant of Ora for predator deterrence that has seen traction and right now I’m working on modifying the first version to accommodate RF-based motion sensor technology for this use case.