A cassowary in the rear-view mirror of my car. It’s one of my most bizarre bird experiences, almost as incredible an encounter with the bird itself.
The southern cassowary sighting occurred while I was leaving Mission Beach in far-north Queensland after abandoning a search for the elusive species.
After hours of hunting, I had drawn a blank in areas known for cassowary sightings and decided to head back to Townsville, where I lived at the time.
No sooner had I hit the road, watching with disappointment as the rainforest surrounding Mission Beach vanished behind me, than the cassowary dashed across the road.
A quick U-turn and I was back at the spot where I had seen the giant bird. Too late, it had vanished into the rainforest, fig and palm leaves closing behind it.
The cassowary experience, or non-experience, sprang to mind last month when I read a report that artificial intelligence (AI) was being employed to give cassowaries a fighting chance against a major threat to their survival – collisions with motor vehicles in cassowary country.
A trial using AI to detect cassowaries and to warn drivers of their presence has met with incredible success. Cassowary deaths on the section of road used for the experiment have been cut by more than a third.
A sensor called the Large Animal Activated Roadside Monitoring and Alert System was used to identify the birds at a busy cassowary crossing point on the Kennedy Highway at Kuranda, about 30 kilometres north-west of Cairns. It uses a camera to constantly monitor the environment.
Once the bird is identified, the sensor sends out a signal to a computer which delivers a signal to a sign that flashes messages to drivers, warning them to slow down.
The Queensland transport department used AI for three months to detect the birds and found it to be 97 per cent accurate in identifying cassowaries, leading to a 31 per cent decrease in fatal crashes.
The department said vehicle strikes were the number one cause of death for the endangered species, with about two dozen cassowaries killed in road collisions in Queensland last year,
A veterinarian at Tully on the Cassowary Coast, Graham Lauridsen, welcomed the reduction in bird deaths, saying in his area a cassowary was hit by a car each month on average.
The Queensland road authorities also say the technology could be used for other purposes, including protecting children around school zones.
Meanwhile, AI appears to have the potential to address the high rate of roadkill in another state where roadkill is a major issue, Tasmania.
I have a particular interest in the subject. Some years back I wrote a book, Riding the Devil’s Highway, in which I revealed Tasmania was dubbed the “roadkill capital of the world” because of the high rate of wildlife deaths on its roads.