ace‘There were stoats in kitchen cupboards’: AI deployed to help save Orkney’s birds
At first, the stoat looks like a faint smudge in the distance. But, as it jumps closer, its sleek body is identified by a heat-detecting camera and, with it, an alert goes out to Orkney’s stoat hunters. Aided by an artificial intelligence programme trained to detect a stoat’s sinuous shape and movement, trapping teams are dispatched with the explicit aim of finding and killing it. It is the most sophisticated technology deployed in one of the world’s largest mammal eradication projects, which has the aim of dete…
AI trained to recognize stoat shape and movement on heat-detecting cameras triggers alerts to trapping teams, supporting an eradication effort that by October 2025 was associated with a 1,267% increase in curlew hatching chance on Orkney mainland
Article projects future camera deployment as 'will soon be staked out' so full AI network outcome not yet observed by publication date 2025-10-18
Evidence
- JournalismThe Guardian2025-10-18
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Truvace Impact Record TRV-2026-0117, v1: “‘There were stoats in kitchen cupboards’: AI deployed to help save Orkney’s birds.” Truvace, 2026-07-13. /record/TRV-2026-0117 (accessed at citation time). sha256 a1f953a5f438064c…
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