Review of Last Year's Drone Survey Data

At this time of the year, when there is a natural break in surveying, we like to take stock and look back over the survey data from the previous season. Up until June 2024 our database holds over 100,000 records across 800,000 hectares - this coverage represents over 3% of the total UK landmass.

The majority of these recordings are deer but there is also data collected for species such as feral goats, wild boar, wallabies, a variety of bird species and even a fugitive macaque monkey. For the purpose of this analysis we are just going to look at deer records and in the last year alone we have counted over 66,000 individual deer across the six wild UK species.

Top Left - Red Deer, Top Right - Chinese Water Deer, Middle Left - Roe Deer, Middle Right - Muntjac, Bottom Left - Sika Deer, Bottom Right - Fallow Deer.

Since we started surveying, our data now spans over 995 individual sites ranging in size from a few hectares to 30 thousand hectares spanning five different countries. The results highlight some interesting findings with new species recorded in certain areas whilst other areas showing very high densities.

The data we have collected only shows what we have recorded on the area we are surveying and is a minimum count of that species at that time.

August 2023 to June 2024

The breakdown detailed below show Fallow deer once again as the dominant species being recorded in the highest numbers when you compare it to last years species breakdown.

Muntjac and Chinese Water deer although showing some of the lower percentages of the overall count, they were recorded in higher densities than any other species with the highest recordings showing Muntjac close to 200 per km2 on one peri-urban site and Chinese Water deer recorded at over 120 per km2 in ideal marshland. In terms of the larger species, Fallow beat Red deer in most cases in terms of density per km2.

Distribution

Another way to look at the datasets is by looking at the distribution maps. The top line shows the data collected from 2022/2023 season and the bottom line of maps shows this combined with the most recent seasons data - 2023/2024.

As our datasets build, there is more scope to analyse it to predict how many deer are living across the UK by using mean averages across different habitats and regions. We hope to work on this dataset in the future to contribute towards a better shared understanding of deer, their distribution and importantly, their density.