A Comparison of Navigation by Visual Flight Rules and Global Positioning Systems for Aerial Baiting: Wild Dog Control in North Eastern New South Wales

Abstract

Navigation by Visual Flight Rules (VFR) or using topographic maps and visual clues of the landscape was compared with navigation using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for aerial baiting for wild dog control in north east New South Wales from 2004 to 2009. The Null hypothesis of this study was that there was no difference between VFR and GPS navigation when following aerial baiting transects for wild dog control. The study was replicated temporally with years 2004 to 2006 navigated by the traditional VFR method and 2007 to 2009 navigated using GPS. To compare the two systems Geographic Information System (GIS) software was used to place the aircraft flight log overlay onto multiple ring buffers spaced at 100 m intervals from 0 m to 1000 m from the proposed bait transect. The proportion of the aircraft flight log within a given buffer interval was determined by using the Intersect function. The percentage of the aircraft flight log within each buffer interval was calculated.