Plague: Background
Plague was introduced into the United States from Asia through shipping ports in the early 1900s. It can now be found in small wild animal populations throughout the Western states. Plague is a zoonotic disease, meaning it can be spread from animals to humans, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Plague exists naturally through a complex flea-rodent cycle where fleas become infected by feeding on animals such as chipmunks, prairie dogs, rabbits, ground squirrels, tree squirrels, mice and woodrats that are infected with the bacteria. Infected fleas then transmit the plague bacteria to other mammals and humans during the blood feeding process. Carnivores typically get plague by ingesting infected animals or from flea bites. Other routes of exposure may include contact with contaminated soil or inhalation of aerosolized bacteria in respiratory droplets from infected animals.
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Video Transcript
Transcript for Flying Nakoda
Maxwell Lombardi, ASU Research Enterprise (ASURE): There’s 1,000 different frames, 1,000 different motors that can get the job done.
Speaker: These are parts and pieces of a plan to save an endangered species.
Maxwell Lombardi: You know 40 or 50 different components, and they all have to work together.
Speaker: Some plans fail before they fly.
Steven Latino, ASU Research Enterprise (ASURE): There’s been some challenges. There’s been some hiccups.
Speaker: But this one is finally taking off.
This custom drone was designed and built by ASU Research Enterprise in partnership with the Arizona Game and Fish Department. It will help Game and Fish conserve and protect black-footed ferrets.
They’re undeniably adorable and extremely endangered.
Holly Hicks, Arizona Game & Fish Department: They are one of the most endangered mammals in North America.
Speaker: Black-footed ferrets still exist, thanks to a decades’ old captive breeding program and the reintroduction effort, led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Arizona Game and Fish joined the effort, releasing captive-born ferrets in the Aubrey Valley near Seligman beginning in 1996.
Two more release sites were added since then. They have to have plenty of prairie dogs because ferrets rely on them to survive.
Holly Hicks: There’s been studies that suggest that up to 90% of the diet of ferrets is prairie dogs. And they live in their burrows, so they rely on them not only for food but for shelter.
Speaker: That’s why sylvatic plague is a serious problem.
Holly Hicks: Plague is an evil thing that we have to deal with, and we constantly battle.
Speaker: The disease is spread by infected fleas, and it can wipe out entire colonies of prairie dogs.
Maeghan Miller, Arizona Game & Fish Department: So, this is Garland Prairie. This is our next potential black-footed ferret release site within Arizona.
Speaker: Garland Prairie is west of Flagstaff and south of I-40 on the Kaibab National Forest. In 2016, it had about 1,800 acres with good prairie dog populations.
Maeghan Miller: 2017, we had plague come through, and it almost completely decimated the prairie dog population. So, this last year, we density mapped again, and we’re looking at roughly 400 acres of good prairie dog habitat.
Speaker: The Kaibab National Forest has been partnering with Game and Fish to improve the prairie dog population. But it will have to rebound dramatically before Game and Fish will consider releasing ferrets here.
Maeghan Miller: Right now, we have not released ferrets because we need to manage the prairie dog population.
Speaker: That includes moving prairie dogs into the area, dusting burrows with insecticide to kill fleas, and protecting prairie dogs with an edible vaccine.
Holly Hicks: The plague vaccine is it’s a like round, little pellet and it’s peanut butter–flavored, so prairie dogs are more enticed to eat it.
Speaker: Getting it to them is the hard part. Distributing vaccine baits by hand across thousands of acres takes a lot of time. Using off-road vehicles is faster, but it damages habitat.
Holly Hicks: So, we have been working with the ASU Research Enterprise Group to help build a heavy-lift drone—something that is capable of lifting up to 50 pounds and can distribute the baits for us.
Maxwell Lombardi: These are going to be electric.
Steven Latino: This is not the type of thing you can get off the shelf. Everything was researched, designed, and built in-house.
Speaker: Game and Fish contacted the ASURE and ASU team in late 2018, after learning about their experience with drones.
Christian Fortunato, ASU Research Enterprise (ASURE): We put this challenge out to the students at ASU to come up with a drone that’ll help first responders.
Maxwell Lombardi: Why is that so tight?
Speaker: Maxwell was one of the students who participated in that challenge to build a drone for search and rescue. Now, he was building a drone for a different kind of rescue mission.
Maxwell Lombardi: You know, it’s one of the things that makes me enjoy coming to work is knowing that once this thing’s up and running, it’s not just going to be easy to take pictures of real estate or to film movies; it's going to be to help the environment and save a species—one was first thought extinct and then brought back and now faces extinction again.
Christian Fortunato: We have Maxwell Lombardi, who just finished his master’s degree in robotics, so he’s the systems engineer for the design that’s behind me, with help from Jamie Shores. Jamie is our mechanical engineering intern.
Jamie Shores: It's a really neat job to have as a student.
Maxwell Lombardi: I do feel like it's my baby, my design. And I'm really glad I'll be able to get it to be as close to 100% as possible before I take off.
Speaker: Soon, he'll be leaving to build drones for the Navy.
Holly Hicks: Look at that thing. Wow!
Speaker: But first he shows Game and Fish biologist, Holly Hicks, his latest creation.
Maxwell Lombardi: So, when you put a new motor on, you connect A to A again. The biggest challenge was definitely achieving the flight time, knowing the payload.
Holly Hicks: This is amazing! This is going to be so much fun! So what do you guys have left to do?
Maxwell Lombardi: We’re done. It's just hooking it all up, and we’re going to a test flight later today.
On screen:
Drone Studio - ASU Tempe Campus
Courtesy: ASURE
Speaker: The drone performed well during a series of test flights. A few days later on May 31st, 2019, it was time to hand the machine over to Game and Fish. The final demonstration flight didn’t go as planned.
Maxwell would not get to troubleshoot the problem because he left for the Navy the very next day. So, Steven, who up until now had worked on the periphery of the project, was thrust right in the thick of it.
Steven Latino: So, my role in this project has morphed into basically the senior technician and assembly engineer for the drone.
Speaker: His team did some work to reduce vibrations that caused the autopilot to over-correct. They made some other minor adjustments and tested the drone a lot.
Steven Latino: I had to learn how to fly a drone, learn how to build a drone—lots of YouTube video time.
Speaker: In the summer of 2020, it was finally time to fly Nakoda at Garland Prairie.
Holly Hicks: We named her Nakoda.
Speaker: The drone gets its name from one of the first ferrets released by Game and Fish.
Holly Hicks: She was one of the first females that we had in our pens, and she had the first litter of kits in those pens.
Narrator: To get Nakoda ready for launch, the team attaches a hopper that will dispense the vaccine baits.
Steven Latino: The hopper was 3D printed by a student at ASU. It was built to deliver vaccine at exact distances and locations.
Narrator: They filled the hopper with pellets, and Steven programs Nakoda’s flight path.
Holly Hicks: Moment of truth.
Speaker: With all systems go, Nakoda takes to the sky.
The drone can stay airborne for about 30 minutes, depending on the size of its payload. Nakoda weighs in at 37 pounds. She’s about 52 pounds with a full load of pellets.
Holly Hicks: Not only will this drone be able to distribute the plague vaccine baits for us more efficiently, but it’ll also have other capabilities that we can use also.
Speaker: Nakoda was built to be versatile. She can carry infrared cameras and telemetry antennas to detect and track all sorts of wildlife, day and night.
Holly Hicks: Hopefully, someday this will be an everyday tool that we can use.
Speaker: Nakoda is proving she can get the job done. Every nine yards, the hopper sends three pellets flying in different directions.
Maeghan Miller: It’s really exciting to see where we started and now up in the air distributing vaccines.
Holly Hicks: Being able to cover a good couple of thousand acres with this drone in a couple of days, rather than having that take weeks.
Speaker: It’s a strong step forward in the quest to make Garland Prairie a home for endangered black-footed ferrets.
Maeghan Miller: That is the long-term goal. We are hoping to increase our prairie dog population to the point where it’s going to be sustainable for a black-footed ferret population and hopefully see black-footed ferrets out here. And then to release that first black-footed ferret out here, that would just—the last four years of work—it would just make it all worthwhile. Super exciting!
Speaker: With the help of Nakoda, Game and Fish is hoping to reach new heights in wildlife conservation.