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Killing Rats with GPS
techmaven writes "When Channel Islands National Park officials needed an estimated about 300 rats exterminated on the east side of environmentally sensitive Anacapa Island, Aspen Ag Helicopters got the call. The kill was necessary because the rodents,
descendants of rats that reached the island by way of a shipwreck a century or more ago, were decimating the populations of two rare seabirds. And GPS helped the helicopter company do the job."
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0069005
They can have their fun now... But what will they do when the big ones come?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I want GPS on my TV remote control, so I can find it.
Those terrible park officials! They're having those poor rats put to death when all of Ghod's creatures are sacred! What they should do is organize a nice conference where the rats and the seabirds can sit down and air their grievances peacefully, in a spirit of mutual harmony and understanding.
Seriously, this is pretty cool. Any time technology increases mankind's killing power, I've got to cheer a little bit. After the rats, how about some pigeons (also known as the "gutter bird" and the "winged rat," according to Kent Brockman)?
They that would sacrifice their
The helicopter just used the GPS to navigate. Meanwhile some guy used GPS to navigate himself out of the desert, and a fisherman captain found his way to pango pango.
An interesting article, however some of it is a some of this is a little hard to swallow...
e ivers /dgps/index.htmla il.jsp?conten tid=2109
their statenments about delivering sprays and pellets by air with an accuracy of 'within a foot' would be quite a thing to see, especially when you watch what a helicopters downwash does to items dropped from below it, and allowing for the pilots abilities (remember, the computer is not flying the aircraft here) - I think there cuold be a bit of wishfull thinking involved here, but I'm sure it looks good on the enviromental reports.
I assume they are using DGPS, which is generally available, for example look at:
http://www.navman.co.nz/oem/products/gps/rec
also for a basic discussion:
http://boats.com/content/default_det
but this will certainly not guarantee you the accuracies they are claiming, at least not unless they are dropping the loads on the fixed beacons DGPS relies on (most provided by the coast guard in the US, also at some airfields).
DGPS is a wonderful development on GPS, but is still not that good. Interesting the russian GLONAS system is a little better (if more expensive for receivers) than GPS.
Starwars missle defense system.. aww yeah. :)
If they miss just a male and a female rat, the new rats will breed and the offspring will be immune to GPS :=)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
...that they sprayed enough pesticide on a small island to kill all 100-300 rats. Either they killed them all, as well as every other living organism on the island that is roughly the same size as a rat, or they didn't kill every rat. Rats are decently sized, it's a lot different than killing insect pests. Insect pests might require a few ppm (parts-per-million) pesticide in the air, but the kill a rat, hamster, gerbil, mouse, bird, anything of that size, would require much much more "pesticide." They must have required quite a lethal dose to get all 100-300 of them, as the article says. Not to mention the fact that the dose would have to be increased to take into account that a lot of the particles will attach themselves to plants, trees, etc... which are above ground. This will not contribute to airborn particles, and will not be able to kill a rat (unless they are of the mutated tree-climbing variety!) So the bottom line is, the dosage must have been huge for this small island. Or else there are still some rats around which have survived. They have probably started mating already. I think bringing in some owls might have been a smarter idea.
A Trimflight 3 system. I work next to the people who designed this system here in New Zealand. And they might have even been using the GPS receiver that I write firmware for, the Ag214 (Also known as the MS750). But they were probably using the Ag132 which only does DGPS instead of RTK.
I'm sure this URL will be circulating around the Ag division of Trimble tomorrow :-)
First Chase The Rabbit then Killing Rats...
/GoatSex.cx/){
use MissCleo.pm
predict(){
if ($nextStory =~
$CmdrTacoBachelorParty = $tonight;
inviteMe();
}
}
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is great at killing rats." - Arthur C. Clarke
... so they didn't have to soak the place with RAID. I'm guessing that it is possible to make bait which is attractive to rats, but not birds.
Santa Anacapa is three really small islands, so I doubt there are any native land mammals there (or ones which aren't common on nearby islands.) Santa Cruz island has some native foxes, but that's about it. The seals are quite happy in the area, though. Maybe the beaches are the areas where the poison isn't allowed.
They could have just wrecked a second ship that happened to contain several hundred cats.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Oh well, getting to use GPS is cool.
"I like to wear big boy pants."
You know they fantasize about doing this to people.
And GPS helped the helicopter company do the job. who obviously hadn't heard of cheese and traps. (and exactly how are you supposed to aim at a rat from a helicopter I ask you)?
Video Game cheats, hints a
...the whole idea of survival of the fittest is dead. I don't see where they get off killing all of those rodents in order to protect a couple of rare birds. If the birds cant survive thats their problem. Damn meddling humans, and that dog. Oh well, just my 2 cents.
I don't know about all this. Increasing yields, paying huge sums of money... in the end, it still means that less and less human intervention is needed, less jobs are created, big farms get richer and smaller farms just can't keep up.
It's not really like technology is helping democratise here, is it?
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Tell me, when you hope that your CornWholed nutsacks expand in practical use, is that merely a description of the total number of nutsack users, or is that also a description of the carrying capacity of the sack?
They that would sacrifice their
I bet there could be quite an interesting genetics study in this. Small isolated population, etc
"Aww, bugger" - Unlucky Alf
Rats living in the wild 'elect' a food taster, who tastes any new food, while the rest of the pack watches. If he/she becmes ill, the rest of the rats don't touch the food.
Even when living in captivity alone, rats will taste a tiny bit of new food, and see if they become ill, finishing the food if not, so the posion they used would have to be increadibly strong to kill a single rat with a single bite, or very slow acting to kill a pack after the taster has sampled it and given it the OK.
Clever little critters. I've kept domesticated ones for many years, and they never cease to amaze me with things they do or learn. You can house train them, get them to come when called, and do simple tricks for treats, just like dogs.
It is reckoned that living in a big city, you are never more than 3 yards away from a wild rat. Nuff said!
When I were your age, all round here were fields...
Then humans.
I can't even afford a call phone, why should rodents be allowed to live with GPS!?
I agree with this post: Kill all the rats with GPS, and give us needy humans some of that technology!
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
Damn, and I followed the link to see how they tuned the GPS sattelites to be used for pest-control. They must have had more than one military use, global doomsday machine?
This sounds vaguely similar to Sewer Shark, an old school game for Sega CD. Basically, you flew around in this hovercraft shooting at rats. Now this was entertainment! I can only imagine that the helicopter version is ten times better...
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
This reminds me of the situation on the Galapagos islands.
Goats had been introduced back when the first sailors had arrived. Now they are upsetting the balance of the ecosystem and must be erradicated. Unfortunatly, due to the delicate nature of the ecosystem, and the general lack of navigability around the island, goat removal options are few.
One is to use $20,000 dollar goat attack dogs (I swear on my karma I'm not making this up) with self-destruct collars (if they attack anything besides goats)
The other is called the judas goat program. One goat is captured, his horns painted and a tracking device attached, then let lose. In a few days he will find another goat herd, at which time a helicopter with hunters (goat snipers, again I'm not making this up) flys over the herd, and methodicaly pick off each goat except the judas goat.
1) We have a fragile ecosystem that is being decimated by interloping humans^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrats.
2) This is a protected environment for rare seabirds.
3) The very first ecological disaster that led to the banning of a pesticide was due to it's negative effect on the indiginous bird population (DDT).
Conclusion: we should drop a ton of poison pellets in this National Park in order to save the birds.
And I thought some of Microsoft's arguments in their anti-trust case were wacky...
C'mon, how many people, upon reading that headline, immediately thought of the "Killswitch" episode of X-files?
Decimate, obliterate, or exterminate?
Not the type of story I like to see on /. Domesticated rats are intelligent animals that make *great* pets. I understand that these particular animals needed to be killed, but it's a shame, and that shame is not the focus of this story; rather it is the gps. Technology is not more important than life--any life.
loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
I actualy live in Oxnard, and my father is a farmer. My family has known the folks at Aspen as long as I can remeber.
I am also pretty familiar with GPS's and Helicopters.
one more thing I am familiar with; Anacapa Island, and I just can't see how GPS would help with this job. Anacapa is little more than a rock that juts out of the ocean about 14 miles off the coast of California, you can see it from anywhere in ventura county that has a clear view of the ocean.The island is broken up into 3 smaller islands each not much larger than a couple of hundred yards. Any sufficently detailed map should be all you would need to precisley dump your poison.
You left off the rest of the story.... they paid the Iscariot goat 30 bucks for his troubles, and he tried to turn it down. But they said take it, and he did. Then guilt came to him, and his goat heart was heavy, and he went off and hanged himself. (and became goat jerky)
It may be cold, but at least it's clear.
The Park service could have made some money off this whole thing. Just call Mark Burnett and let him hold the next edition of survivor on the island. Then just them eat the rats, and plus you can charge the contestants a campground fee.
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Then it says that the exterminators killed 100 to 300 rats.
Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't a rat population given 100 years to grow without interference from humans number a lot more than 100 to 300 individuals by now? Or are they saying that the rat population was already held in check at 100 to 300 by the carrying capacity of the ecosystem?
you missguessed my lineage. i am the spawn of the gimp... the gimp from pulp fiction. not the gnu image manipulation tool which makes adobe shiver with fear of falling revnue if their schmuck customers found out what they could get for free.
-- john