Episode 213: Wildlife Rescue: Drones Safeguarding Nature in Texas Parks with Matthew Bridgefarmer

Episode notes

How to avoid risking human lives: employ drones...

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Welcome to this 20-episode Texas Robotics Summit Mini Series! This 4 day event (March 4-7, 2024) was hosted at the Reveille Peak Ranch and by our friends at Granite Defense , and showcased the use of robotics (air/water/ground) in public safety via keynote presentations, training scenario stations, roundtable conversations, and more.

In this episode:

Drones in wildlife and emergency management

Tackling remote area challenges with advanced technology

Future possibilities for drones in environmental conservation

Hear from Matthew Bridgefarmer - the Lieutenant Game Warden for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Lieutenant Bridgefarmer discusses the role of drones in Texas Parks and Wildlife and their integration into various operations. He highlights the challenges of all-hazards response and the importance of connectivity in remote areas. Bridgefarmer also explores the use of drones in dangerous environments and their potential for scientific research and tracking of invasive species.

He also talks about advancements in drone technology and the future applications of drones in Texas Parks and Wildlife. And lastly, we conclude by discussing the unique applications of drones and the importance of collaboration in the industry.

So click play now to hear what he has to share! And stay tuned for the next Mini Series episode!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Kevin's intro: the Texas Robotics Summit mini-series
2. 0:45 Matthew Bridgefarmer of Texas Parks and Wildlife joins
3. 0:57 What the Texas Robotics Summit is about
4. 2:17 The game warden role and how the drone program started
5. 3:34 All-hazards response across a huge state
6. 5:18 Working around zero connectivity in remote areas
7. 8:09 Tyler joins: how game wardens use drones day to day
8. 9:31 Drones and wildlife research
9. 10:59 Tracking invasive species from the air
10. 13:28 What excites them now and over the next 5 to 10 years
11. 17:53 The booth and the payload delivery system
12. 19:26 Parting thoughts
13. 21:17 Closing

Questions answered in this episode

How did Texas Parks and Wildlife start using drones?

Matthew Bridgefarmer says the department stood up a UAS program in 2017 bleeding into 2018. It began as a joint venture between local field supervisors in central Texas and the manned aviation unit, with the initial vision focused on search and rescue as an extra tool.

Hear it at 2:35

What missions does Texas Parks and Wildlife use drones for?

The program started with search and rescue but quickly expanded. Matthew Bridgefarmer says they now use drones for criminal apprehension, flooding response, and all hazard work. Tyler says they do wildfire work, pursuit bailouts, deer surveys with the wildlife division, and patrols looking for poachers and illegal hunters.

Hear it at 2:35

What connectivity challenges do game wardens face when flying drones?

Matthew Bridgefarmer says challenges range from zero connectivity in remote West Texas areas to overloaded or destroyed infrastructure in places like downtown Houston after disasters. Their current connectivity is mostly wifi hotspot, and they are exploring satellite and mesh network options.

Hear it at 5:36

Why is connectivity important for drone operations in disaster response?

Without connectivity, pilots are isolated and cannot share information with incident command or other responders. Matthew Bridgefarmer says this creates airspace safety issues, especially in crowded airspace during events like Hurricane Harvey where drones and manned helicopters must share space safely.

Hear it at 6:40

What future drone technology excites Matthew Bridgefarmer?

He is excited about drone in the box technology and remote connectivity that could allow a pilot anywhere in the state to launch a drone from a vehicle, such as a canine truck, giving instant air support to field wardens in remote areas where manned aircraft are limited.

Hear it at 14:55

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 213 transcript

Wildlife Rescue: Drones Safeguarding Nature in Texas Parks with Matthew Bridgefarmer

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Matthew Bridgefarmer, Tyler (Texas Parks and Wildlife)

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to a 20-episode mini-series at the Texas Robotics Summit, hosted by our friends at Granite Defense. We dive into the evolving world of drones and robotics in public safety aviation. Through 20 fantastic conversations with leaders across public safety, from the fire service, law enforcement, EMS operations, wildlife management, and more, we explore the challenges, investments in the critical role of technology in enhancing emergency services operations. A special thanks to the sponsor of the Smart Firefighting Podcast, W.S. Darley & Company, for making this podcast possible. Enjoy the show. I'm sitting alongside Matthew Bridgefarmer, the lieutenant game warden with Texas Parks and Wildlife and also the UAS program supervisor on his first podcast. How are you doing, Matthew?

[0:54] Matthew Bridgefarmer: I'm doing wonderful. Thanks for having me on.

[0:56] Kevin Sofen: Hey, it's great to have you. So, Texas Robotics Summit here in Burnet, Texas. What's going on here?

[1:02] Matthew Bridgefarmer: So, this is a phenomenal event that's been multi-years running. Essentially, it's a gathering of public safety agencies across Texas and even drawn from folks, you know, around the nation as a whole, regardless of your primary discipline. Obviously, I'm a game warden, so you wouldn't normally think game warden's at a robotics summit, right? But the general purpose of this is be able to bring everybody together that have common shared missions or overlapping missions, kind of build those relationships, better understanding as far as how everybody's doing anything, whether it's a program management thing or it's a specific mission flight thing. And then obviously there's a fantastic vendor show and great folks like yourself here that add to the value of this overall.

[1:47] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, right now it really, it's been a fun, just I guess electric environment that's been really fun. and I know lunch is coming out soon, so I'm sure excited for that. Start being, just sitting here.

[1:58] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Always good food.

[1:59] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, sitting in the sun, just kind of sweating my face off, so I'm looking forward to that.

[2:04] Matthew Bridgefarmer: It's spring in Texas, we lucked out. So this is nothing. It could be raining, it could be snowing, it's a beautiful day.

[2:10] Kevin Sofen: I think rain with all this clay dirt would be an interesting story.

[2:13] Matthew Bridgefarmer: It does, it does get interesting.

[2:15] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, and so you mentioned the Game Warden, you know, and within Texas Park is Wildlife in terms of maybe why you're here and kind of your interaction relationship with drones and the program. Like how are you approaching and interacting with robots and drones within your day-to-day week-to-week operations?

[2:35] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Certainly, so yeah, you've got to kind of rewind in our history a little bit back to about 2017, bleeding over into 2018 when we stood up a UAS program. It was kind of a joint venture between the local field supervisors the central part of Texas as well as our manned aviation unit and so they collaborated and got the ball rolling and the initial vision of the program back then was just an extra tool for search and rescue. Game wardens are always just run to help out whoever and search and rescue is in our wheelhouse because we have access and a good understanding of where people go lost and how to find them, right? So search and rescue was the foundation. From there, obviously it didn't take long if anybody's spent much time around drones, that they are just a phenomenal Swiss Army knife style tool that can do just about anything. And so we quickly started applying it to criminal apprehension stuff, flooding response, disaster, you know, all hazard type work as and then just keeps growing and growing from there.

[3:37] Kevin Sofen: And you mentioned the term all hazards response, and it seems like that's the appropriate term when thinking about first responders, general, whether you're police, law, EMS, and kind of the work that you're doing as a game warden. What are some of the challenges that you face within the geography that you cover, within all hazards? And, you know, like, I'd love to kind of just, you know, if you could paint a picture on what makes those, what are those kind of challenges? And then kind of what are the ways that you've used technology to better respond and be more efficient in those responses?

[4:07] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Certainly. So obviously the challenges are about as big as Texas are. You have everything from far remote desolate areas in West Texas with zero connectivity. Obviously that presents, you know, its own challenges when you're talking about technology and incident management response. But likewise, we have, you know, big hurricanes that come in on the coast and the wildland fires up in the, you know, currently actually in the panhandle that they're working on. But so each region presents its own unique challenges, depending on what that is. And, you know, game warrants have always run to the flooding events and you know we're we're on the state you know response package depending on the nature of the event and so with the drones it was early on largely finding the proper equipment suited for that mission because if you're dealing with a post-hornatic event from a initial search-and-rescue does it damage assessment you know response you're probably still dealing with a large thunderstorm event, too, is you're, you know, we were having issues with aircraft just fine in the rain. So little things like that all the way, you know, to the connectivity issues, just beyond.

[5:18] Kevin Sofen: From the connectivity issue standpoint, how are you approaching that? What are some ways that it is just sort of accepting that some areas don't have connectivity or how are you kind of looking at, I know there's different technologies here that are doing blending LTE and using SATCOM and doing mesh. How are, is that something you're looking at or how are you approaching connectivity challenges?

[5:36] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Yeah, so we're, we're obviously exploring and looking into all those options to be able to solve our mission needs. You know, whether it is that remote West Texas, where there is just no infrastructure or it is downtown Houston, that the infrastructure is just obliterated or overloaded. So our, unfortunately, our current connectivity is pretty much just wifi hotspot standard, you know, infrastructure we are hoping to be playing in the satellite connectivity here pretty soon once we get through some procurement challenges but then yeah the mesh networks or think that we're definitely you know exploring it's really just a matter of priority and funding

[6:18] Kevin Sofen: yeah but it seems like a lot of this as great as a lot of this drone technology is but if you don't have the ability to push some level of data through to be able to communicate from where the drone is to where the other party is to be able to communicate what you're looking at and what it is. It's sort of hard to leverage this tech if you don't have connectivity.

[6:40] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Yeah, so I mean, our pilots, whether it's game warrants or the park police officers are very skilled at their job. And again, if they are in a zero connectivity area, they're gonna be very mission successful with their equipment, but they're also very isolated in that mission. And that poses a couple challenges. one, the ability to get that information out to other parties that are working the same event and how our imagery or our drone position benefits that overall situational awareness for incident command, but also with the lack of connectivity brings in an airspace safety issue that I think it's largely overlooked because depending on the nature of the event we're flying, take a Hurricane Harvey type situation where you have airspace that looks like the Battle of Britain going on ADS-B, and now you've got all these drones mixed in doing good work as well, being able to safely manage and understand the challenges of that airspace because we have our helicopter there too along with our partner agencies doing hoist rescue work. And so how do we share that airspace safely? And if we can't get that connectivity in some way, shape, form awareness to an incident commander level or directly to that manned aircraft unit that we're flying in close proximity, then we're kind of being counterproductive in the overall mission.

[8:09] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I see your colleague Tyler has joined the stage here.

[8:13] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Yes.

[8:13] Kevin Sofen: And Tyler, we're just kind of been jumping in talking about all hazard response and I guess different dynamics of how you're using technology on a daily basis and better to help do your job more effectively, but would love to get any kind of thoughts from you in terms of kind of your perspectives on how drones and robots are a tool that the Texas Parks and Wildlife is using to become more efficient, more effective within your day-to-day, week-to-week operations.

[8:37] Tyler (Texas Parks and Wildlife): Yeah, so we've done all kinds of different operations from the search and rescue side. We got into quite a bit of the wildfire stuff and then also do pursuit bailouts in any of that stuff. And we've done deer surveys with our wildlife division. We're starting to do not patrols where we're looking for road hunters, not hunters in some of these areas, helping out the rest of our field wardens. So we getting to where we're using them in more and more stuff and finding all kinds of new ways to incorporate them into regular field work.

[9:09] Kevin Sofen: I was driving, I live in the Midwest and there's a lot of deer there, but even yesterday driving from the airport to the Airbnbs and everything, I think I saw seven different pods of deer. there's a lot of deer in this state.

[9:23] Tyler (Texas Parks and Wildlife): Yeah, especially kind of this area of Texas, this hill country down into South Texas, there's lots of deer around here.

[9:30] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I can imagine. And Matt, earlier you mentioned kind of like the resource division and the scientific research, whether it's on the deer side, but from kind of population dynamics and from whether it's research within your waterways, which are, I know, very critical and highly engineered to the wildlife. Tell me about kind of the interactions between technology, drones, and the work that's tied in with scientific research.

[9:55] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Yeah, so actually Tyler and I both come from a wildlife management. scientific background before we were, you know, in on the law enforcement side. So there's having that kind of understanding of how businesses conducted from a wildlife research standpoint and management standpoint and very solid and sound methodologies, whether it's just a simple deer census, but I really want to say they're old and outdated, but because they are so sound, they've stood the test of time. And so now with the advent of the technology that's coming along, there's considerable opportunity to embed that technology to make new sound research practices or management practices that will be more efficient and potentially be more accurate. And if we're more accurate on what we're tasked with as a state agency to manage for the people of Texas, then clearly we can do a better job for them.

[10:59] Kevin Sofen: And when thinking about, you know, I'm actually, I'm personally passionate about the environment and a few reasons, but kind of invasive species in general and kind of like the ways that you can track using imagery, using different types of cameras, are you doing any work in terms of how you're leveraging drones to get imagery to kind of, you know, kind of track trends of whether it's plants or trees or animals in different ways?

[11:24] Matthew Bridgefarmer: So a mission set as far as invasive species that we've been eyeballing as a realm to potentially push into, specifically around our inland fisheries division and their responsibility for managing the waterways. Those very aggressive invasive aquatic plants that have considerable impact on the native habitat. And so whether it's just a assessment and monitoring efficiency side of standpoints or potentially down the road with some type of payload delivery application, treatment application to target those invasive species and set the habitat back to where it's supposed to be. There's a lot of opportunities. We are working with the Kerr Wildlife Management Area on a multi-year deer survey project. They have a very sound methodology and basically it's taking that old drive down the road, shine the spotlight left and right and count deer and applying it to the drone, getting a more thorough count of that. And so right now it is basically they are making sure the methodology is sounding accurate and having Tyler and I both flown those missions, it's looking extremely promising. The next leap in that would probably be towards some type of artificial intelligence that can say, not only is that a deer, but you know, this is a coyote, this is a wild hog or whatever. Of course, that also plays back into our search and rescue world or anti-poaching work we do.

[13:01] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I know there's a big, within the wildfire detection space, but being able to use some type of imagery from drones and then being able to detect, is that actually smoke or is it actually fire or is it a deer, is it a person? And just kind of having that, again, the ability to more quickly make decisions and save time seem to be kind of a common theme that I'm hearing throughout kind of this technology drone integration within public safety operations.

[13:27] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Certainly.

[13:28] Kevin Sofen: So this is kind of a question for both of you know, again, of kind of like, it's March, 2024, I said 2023 earlier, but 2024 of like, what excites you about where we're at now and then kind of like in the next five, 10 years about how you see not just robots, but I guess obviously drones is a big thing, but how technology can continue to be integrated to help you do your job more efficiently?

[13:51] Tyler (Texas Parks and Wildlife): Well, so one of our big things is being able to use drones to put into unsafe environments where we can send a robot, we can send a piece of equipment in to an area that is hostile to people and be able to gather the equipment that we need or the information that we need or do a certain task without having to send a person in there. Whether it's indoor with criminals you can send a drone in that potentially the drone gets shot instead of a person or in the hazmat world or a fire scene, things like that you can put these drones in these dangerous spots or robots or underwater, any of that stuff, you can put them in these dangerous spots and not have to send people. And if it gets damaged or destroyed or whatever, then it's a little bit of money's worth of equipment instead of a person. And then we're also doing a lot more integration with manned aviation on a bunch of stuff and just being able to make everybody more efficient at whatever task we're trying to accomplish.

[14:55] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Yeah, so, you know, for me, from a kind of a program supervision, you know, strategic planning, what's not just on the horizon, but over the horizon, you know, as you were alluding to, that we could be excited about. Obviously, we've seen a pretty good maturing of the industry from where we were just three, four years ago, to the point that we really don't need to risk taxpayer money to actually buy a demo unit and find out if it's going to work for our mission. We've got events like this robot summit that we have the relations we can leverage and say yep these agencies speak highly of this or don't of this and give us the direct feedback and to their mission set and we make it applicable to our mission set and we can make sound purchasing decisions and training decisions and mission advancement. But back to your foundational questions, because I'll get long winded over the horizon. What I'm excited about is the application that we're seeing currently sprouting and maturing with the drone in the box technology, the remote connectivity offsite technology for the pilot and how that potentially translates to the very rural and remote work that game wardens do, because we're not in a infrastructure side city that drone in the box is there within a known footprint. Our footprint is ever changing all over the state. And so I'm excited to the fact that there might be down the road someday, a ability to put some type drone in the box in or on one of our canine vehicles so that when they respond to a missing kid or a high-risk you know suspect apprehension deal and they're deploying not only do they have the boots on the ground support but basically they could just hit I need a drone on you know an app and it notifies all the on-call pilots wherever they are in the state and they can launch that drone off the back of that canine truck, wherever it is, go do their thing, support that mission, and they have instant air support, which is something that you would think a state as big as Texas has an immense air support unit, you know, capability for the boots on the ground. Unfortunately, there's only so many helicopters and planes to go around. So the drones are going to greatly fill that gap and that remote connectivity to essentially phone a friend, you know, put the drone up and have not only a pilot flying it, but potentially a dozen other people watching that video feed, some, you know, multi-way communication going on as far as like, hey, I'm seeing this, you know, for you to follow up on or whatever, that's where it starts getting really exciting and you start nerding out on things.

[17:48] Kevin Sofen: Hey, this podcast is for nerding out, so I appreciate that.

[17:51] Matthew Bridgefarmer: You're in the right summit for that.

[17:53] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and so I know you have a booth down there or kind of what is it that you're showing here or kind of what's the Using a demo or what's what's going on?

[18:00] Matthew Bridgefarmer: So we're not really doing any flight demos But because of our unique mission sets that are all over the map we do have the opportunity to bring a unique perspective on how we do things that can benefit others whether it's you know from the fire side from the police side from the general emergency management and one of the things that Tyler has been developing over several years is really fine-tuning our payload delivery system so that you could take whatever drone it is and have a safe and replicatable system to not only drop something to somebody if you needed to but also to control make a controlled delivery into their hands so imagine somebody who is standing on a rooftop of a vehicle and a swept off the roadway situation you know flash flood type deal be able to deliver a life jacket in their hands safely, increase their survivability while we work to get boats in the water to actually go physically pluck them from that hazardous situation. So the unique things like that is, and then our vehicle setup, you know, how we operate because we are so highly mobile versus, you know, what a PD unit might just need to show up on scene and pop the trunk and pull the drone out because they're only flying from here to 100 yards. So basically the back story behind our booth.

[19:26] Kevin Sofen: That's good, and so I think kind of final thoughts and kind of putting you in the spot here a little bit, both of you, but kind of doing some of this mic drop and then to a question of if you have a challenge, a question, a statement, a favorite quote, or anything that you could leave us with here today. And it doesn't necessarily have to be drone or robotics related, but kind of any parting thoughts that you could leave us with here today.

[19:47] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Coming out of left field.

[19:48] Kevin Sofen: Hahaha. Yeah.

[19:50] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Philosophical.

[19:51] Kevin Sofen: It doesn't have to be philosophical. It can also be... Pragmatic.

[19:55] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Yeah. Man. You know, this is where... sometimes you're just kind of at a loss for words, which is rare for me. Yeah, I'm gonna go just with stating the facts. I mean, we're aviators, even though it's, you know, largely viewed as a toy from the big box store, we're aviators, same responsibility, they're there to help and safely share the airspace.

[20:21] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well said.

[20:23] Tyler (Texas Parks and Wildlife): I think it's one of those things that this is a good example of it, is there's all kinds of different agencies and different mindsets that can bring stuff to the table and just getting everybody together and being able to roll ideas off of each other and what works for us may not work for somebody else, but everybody having that open mindset of taking what other people are doing and trying to build off of it and adapt it. This community is pretty good about sharing ideas and trying to move forward as a whole rather than just everybody being in their own little sandbox and not wanting anybody else to play.

[20:56] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well said. Well, Tyler and Matt, you guys are leading the charge I appreciate everything you're doing and I look forward to continue to stay in touch and following the journey that you guys are on to continue to enhance and drive the Texas Parks and Wildlife forward.

[21:11] Matthew Bridgefarmer: Sounds great. Thank you for having us on the Smart Fire Party.

[21:14] Kevin Sofen: Right on. Thank you guys. Thanks for tuning into this mini series created at the Texas Robotics Summit hosted by Granite Defense. Make sure to put this amazing event on your calendar for 2025. For this podcast episode, what do you like? What do you think? a comment on social media and let us know your favorite quote. Thanks for all that you do and have a great day ahead.