Guitar solos and loud signals have been tested – without results • New scare tactics are now being tried
They happen in an instant, the accidents that annually reap scores of wild animal lives. Now a new and world-unique method is being tested which involves scaring away moose and deer with the help of sound. When the detectors along the railway detect an incoming train, the system is activated if there are animals nearby.
– At the passage, we have a thermal camera that detects the game and then a speaker system starts up. So when a moose comes into the area, it is scared away from here, says Johan Rydlöv at the Swedish Transport Administration.
Thousands of accidents between trains and animals
Last year, there were roughly 70,000 wildlife accidents in traffic, of which 5,000 were between trains and animals. Collisions which, in addition to the suffering, cost society large sums.
– It costs society 11-15 billion a year. There are hospital costs, insurance costs and the bill for the train operators who have to repair their locomotives, says Johan Rydlöv.
After testing different sounds, the project concluded that the human voice was what the animals experienced as the most threatening.
Human voice or kid sounds work
– We’ve tested guitar solos, loud signals, but they don’t react in the right way. A human voice or a strong pee sound has some kind of meaning for the animals and then they pull away, says Mattias Olsson, researcher from Enviroplanning who was involved in developing the method.
During the year or so that the method has been tested, no wildlife collisions have occurred here. And the hope is to be able to apply the system in more places in the country.
– If we can use this, we may be able to reduce wildlife accidents in the long term on the railway, says Mattias Olsson.