• Farmer Christoph Böhm (Hof Schleiersbach) in Fränkisch-Crumbch, Germany;
• The German Aerospace Center (DLR), the agricultural technology company CLAAS and the Technical University of Munich work together under the leadership of i_s_a_ Industrieelektronik GmbH;
• The joint project is supported by the Bavarian State Hunting Association, and project management is carried out by ZENTEC GmbH, Germany.

Depending on the vegetation and weather, farmers usually only have a small window of opportunity to mow their meadows and bring in the fodder that is so important for their operations. They use modern mowing devices that work ever faster and more efficiently.

At the same time, fawns released in the meadows in this mowing period are difficult to find, even for experienced hunters. This is because during the first two weeks of life, fawns have a so-called “squeezing instinct” and almost no smell of their own. This means they are excellently camouflaged in the tall grass. During this phase of life, the fawns remain in their place continuously and “press” themselves motionless on the ground when there is danger. This means they are not only protected from predators, but also from being discovered by humans. Without aids it is very difficult to track down and save the fawns from the mowers.

Every year, farmers and hunters have to deal with the same problem: fawns cannot escape the mowers and are killed by the machines. And this is very sad and unacceptable! At the same time, as a consequence, there is not only a risk of contamination of the silage (= green fodder stored in the silo) and damage to the hunting tenant, but also an extremely unpleasant situation for the operators of the mowers who are involved directly confront this locally quite common problem of fawn breeding.

It is currently very time-consuming to effectively find and rescue fawns using the previously known methods, so that around 100,000 young animals are fatally injured during mowing every year in Germany alone. Against the background of this problem, the WILDRETTER project was launched, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The aim was to develop a reliable application system for fawn rescue when mowing agricultural areas.

It is the connection of the components and the separation of the search process and rescue that makes the wildlife rescuer “Wildretter” unique (see also image "How it works" below). A central coordination and communication platform (www.wildretter.de) is necessary for planning and implementation within a very limited period of action. The process is most effective when the search operation (in the period before mowing) and the rescue operation (immediately before or during mowing) are decoupled from each other.

Image: How it works: technical components. Source: Wildretter F-C

• The deer fawns found in this way are marked with an active transponder, which means the animals can be easily found again even after a long time and saved from being mowed at short notice, so that animals and farmers benefit from this process during mowing.
• This will hopefully enable large-scale rescue operations in the near future, which could be done in both portable and machine-based ways.
• The fawns found are carried out of the area immediately before mowing and secured there to prevent them from being brought back to the supposedly safe meadow by the mother animal. After the mowing process they are released and after a short time the deer track them down and lead them away.
• All data, actions and experiences are collected, analysed and evaluated on the platform www.wildretter.de under strict data protection guidelines. This means the project can develop into other regions and improve sustainably.
• The risk of silage contamination is minimised, as well as the emotional and occupational risk to mower operators.

Image 1: Starting the drone for search, Source: Wildretter F-C Image 2: Tagging a rescued dear fawn, Source: Wildretter F-C

Thorsten Stürmer
Email: stuermer@zentec.de
c/o ZENTEC Zentrum für Technologie, Existenzgründung und Cooperation GmbH
Website: https://www.wildretter.de/home.html
Agricultural technology company CLAAS
Website: https://www.claas.com

Wolfgang Kniejski (INI-Novation GmbH),
based on an interview and presonal contacts with Mr. Thorsten Stürmer