A young Rotorua mountain biker looks to have come up with a killer concept for wallaby control while out getting “big air” on the trails in the famed Whakarewarewa Forest.
Fourteen-year-old Cameron Moore, from Rotorua Lakes High School, has turned to Artificial Intelligence to create a trap that recognises a wallaby when it comes sniffing around.
A camera linked to an AI programme detects the wallaby - having been “taught” to distinguish it from other animals - which then triggers a trap door to open.
The wallaby pokes its head inside to retrieve a wheatgerm or eucalyptus oil bait, and is then killed by a plunger that drops from above.
Cameron’s idea, which has won him the supreme prize in the “Samsung Solve for Tomorrow” competition for Years 5 – 11 students, was hatched when he spotted a wallaby foraging on young native vegetation while he was out riding.
“I was on a technical trail going down and out of my eye I saw something brown and fuzzy move. It was a wallaby and I noticed it was eating small native shoots.
“There’s a giant infestation of wallabies in the Bay of Plenty and it will just keep spreading unless we do something about it.”
The secret to Cameron’s creation lies in the AI component – “I had to train it using different photos of wallabies and other animals until it realised what my target was, the wallaby.”
The plunger he uses is a readily available “Good Nature” model which is powered by a small CO2 cannister.
“The wallaby’s head hits a steel pin inside the trap, which then triggers the plunger to activate,” Cameron says.
“It’s very humane because it doesn’t feel any pain, it will just be gone.”
Cameron says his prototype has been well received by those in the pest control industry, and he’s already working on ideas to improve its appeal to curious wallabies.
Colin Maunder, sustainability general manager for Timberlands, which manages Whakarewarewa Forest, says Cameron’s concept has potential for commercial use.
“What a fantastic young man. It’s lateral thinking, he’s looking at the AI future and saying ‘hey I can come up with a solution.’
“It’s very simple in its nature, but AI and technology is very complex and requires someone with the intelligences and thought to put those two together.”
He says Whakarearewa Forest, which includes the giant Californian Redwoods planted in 1906 and is a mountain biking mecca, presents a unique situation when trying to deal with wallabies.
“We have over 800,000 visits a year, so we have got a huge amount of people visiting the forest, we’ve got a pest problem but we don’t have a conventional solution to deal with them.
“Conventional is poisoning or shooting and you can’t do that around people and dogs.”
As for Cameron, he anticipates spending many more hours refining his trap, but says it won’t come at the expense of his mountain biking.
“I will still find the time to do it, I’ve got to do biking.”
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