Thermal cameras used to monitor stoats on the Orkney Islands
Lying north of Scotland, the Orkney islands are home to over 150 bird species and are the only place where you can find the Orkney Vole. In 2010 non-native stoats were discovered and began devastating the native wildlife. RSPB Scotland initiated a project in 2019 to remove stoats from the islands. Earlier this year they reported over 8,500 stoats had been removed and the Voles are doing well. However they are not done.
To help understand where the last remaining stoats are, RSPB purchased 30 DOC AI Cams last year and another 50 this year, with solar battery packs. This is the largest single deployment of these thermal cameras. Because the thermal cameras are always on, these cameras see a lot more stoats than trail cameras and at a further distance. They're finding them effective at 20-30m and able to spot movement at 50m. For example this video shows a stoat that was missed by a trail camera sitting next to the DOC AI Cam.
James Geluk is the Specialist Team Lead for the Orkney Native Wildlife Project, managing a team to remove the stoats:
"We’re just moving into our dispersal season, where our sighting spike, but the cameras have allowed us to track family groups in areas we’d never get public sightings, and much earlier in the year than we would typically have been able to, so they’re doing an exceptional job for us at the moment."
"In the last year, we’ve been able to capture 423 separate stoat recordings, of which 137 were correctly identified as a stoat by the AI."
"What has been invaluable, and somewhat unexpected, has been the benefit of the near-instantaneous trigger. I have between 20 and 40 recordings of stoats that last less than 0.3 seconds, which a conventional trail camera would have no chance of capturing"
An example of a 1s stoat video successfully captured by the DOC AI Cam in the middle of a summer's day. Below is another example of a video of a fast moving stoat.
Stoat identification accuracy is low, primarily because we don't have much data. But that is improving. Before October 2025 they saw an accuracy of 20%. This increased to 33% after a new model was released and should increase again with another updated AI model being released this week.
A DOC AI Cam on the Orkney Islands with a solar panel
Of course the camera will also record other wildlife. Here's an otter.
You can read more about their progress on the Orkney Native Wildlife Project news page