FR

Birds wearing bAWARE
gain a sixth sense
for mortal dangers

With our high tech, they avoid collisions with wind turbines, powerlines
and electrocutions

At bAWARE we asked: What would a bird want from technology?
The answer: “Can it enable co-existence instead of killing us?”

Gunter Schoech, founder

While human infrastructure grows exponentially, wildlife populations dwindle

When the math inverts, the paradigm shifts to saving individual specimen.

A person holds up a dead augur buzzard against a concrete power pole
Bird electrocuted on a power pole, hanging from the crossarm
Dead red kite in a field, 25 metres from a wind turbine
Red kite killed by a wind turbine, lying only 25 m from it, Arnsberg-Kirchlinde, Germany, 18 May 2016. Westphalia’s chemical and veterinary investigations authority confirmed that it died of blunt force trauma. Photo: Martin Lindner, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.
Photo: Martin Lindner, CC BY-SA 3.0

Till all infrastructure is safe, bAWARE saves the rarest of victims

While counter-intuitive at first sight: For certain rare species with large territories, it is actually a lot easier to make a few animals safe than the entire human infrastructure.

Crews in bucket trucks retrofitting power poles in a field. Photo: Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds
Augur buzzard wearing the bAWARE tag, approaching a power pole: a still from our animation

Introducing bAWARE, our revolutionary solution for wildlife-human co-existence

Protecting wide-ranging or even migratory species from human infrastructure is one of conservation’s biggest challenges. While equipping each specimen with smart protection may seem counter-intuitive, it could be far more efficient for rare species than to attempt to make vast areas of human infrastructure safe.

Consider the example of the martial eagle:

Illustration of Earth wrapped in glowing lines representing the global power grid
Martial eagle in flight against a pale sky
Goshawk on a padded perch, seen from behind, with a GPS tracker on its back

Infrastructure example power transmission & distribution:

An International Energy Agency IEA 2023 report puts the global electricity grid at ~80 million km uninsulated connections, growing faster than the world economy.

This represents about 2000 circumferences of the earth!

~90% thereof are in the most deadly 5-35 kV range.

Higher voltages use safe wire distances and large enough insulators. While harmless in terms of electrocutions, they still cause many collisions of large wild birds who fail to see them in difficult light conditions and/or dodge the many wires.
More in Simon Thomsett’s explanation.

Compare that to the territory of the spectacular martial eagle for example, which is typically 150 to 300 km² (58 to 116 sq mi). Many hundred, or even thousands of poles would have to be insulated to make them safe for 1 pair of these birds, the largest African eagle (wing span of up to 240cm (7 ft 10 in)). There are only a few thousand left in all of Africa.

Now consider migrating species travelling many thousand km/year, and it becomes clear:

It is totally unrealistic to make their habitats safe

Consider:

  1. Europe alone rings 3.8 million birds per year, which means some human held that bird at some moment in its hands
  2. Falconers and conservationists have attached radio-telemetry to birds for decades, but only for tracking and information gathering

Equipping a specimen with bAWARE is like vaccinating it against several deadly dangers. The device knows or senses where the danger is, and possesses actuators capable of altering the animal's behavior.

Patent-pending on-board smart device helping animals avoid danger with sensors, geo-fencing & actuators.

Bird electrocutions explained by co-inventor Simon Thomsett

Why hasn’t this been tried before?