A Smart Bait Dispenser with Real-time Monitoring for Species-Specific Bait Delivery

1. Remote image capture using trail cameras has become an essential part of many wildlife monitoring and management programs. Oral bait vaccination has been a valuable tool in wildlife disease management, but baits are generally dropped on the ground or delivered by devices that are typically developed to utilise physical and behavioural characteristics of the target species. Both approaches can result in a high proportion of baits being consumed by non-target species. Merging years of trail camera research knowledge with new technologies allows for development of more specific bait delivery options. 2. We developed an open-source smart bait dispenser that uses field-based image classification to selectively deliver baits to the target species. The system's long-range wide area network-based remote telemetry provides updates to an online dashboard in near real time to show camera triggers, target species detections, and baits dispensed. We trialled four dispensers with placebo baits for 62 nights across three field sites in Tasmania, Australia to deliver baits to Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii). 3. The dispensers recorded 2106 motion triggers, of which 876 were triggered by animals. The onboard devil classification model achieved 98.6% accuracy, 75.0% precision, 77.4% recall, and a 76.2% F1-score. The dispenser released 41 placebo baits in total, of which 31 were target-specific distributions in response to presence of Tasmanian devils at the dispenser, hence achieving an overall bait delivery success rate of 75.6%. Importantly, no animal was able to forcibly retrieve baits from the dispenser. Observed average battery life across trials was 19.2 nights. 4. These results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of our innovative bait dispenser for targeted bait delivery, offering a versatile ecological tool that can be tailored for various species by simply updating the image classification model. This adaptable system can support critical initiatives like wildlife oral bait vaccination and supplementary feeding after wildlife translocations.