Feral swine (Sus Scrofa) populations in the United States inflict serious and growing ecological and economic impacts to the farming and ranching ecosystems where the population continues to grow and invade new territory. These invasions ultimately impact the security, quality, and safety of the food supply and water resources coming from these regions. Scientific studies highlight the consequences of the growing feral swine population and the challenges of effectively controlling additional growth. Feral swine are an invasive species well known for destroying crops, damaging farmland by rooting, destroying natural resources such as water supplies, and spreading disease to livestock, other wildlife, and humans. In addition to agricultural impacts, evidence demonstrates many negative effects on local ecosystems and indigenous wildlife.
Information System Technologies Inc., (ISTI) is developing a fully automated feral swine recognition and trigger system referred to “SenseHog” that can activate devices used for delivering toxicants masked in baits. SenseHog is automated species-specific multi-sensory recognition system that can activate devices to deliver toxicants, disease vaccines, or contraceptives masked in baits. To maximize target-specific identification and minimize non-target activation (false-alarms) of management devices, the SenseHog utilizes both acoustic and visual sensors together with a suite of advanced and robust mathematical algorithms. Using our automated species recognition system, selective baiting, pharmaceutical delivery, and improved management techniques for research and development (e.g., species-specific monitoring and non-invasive sampling methods) can be extended to monitor many wildlife species. SenseHog can be retrofit to existing delivery devices, giving it improved delivery targeting as well as improved efficiencies with managing and operating the device.
