the times | Monday July 27 2020 1GM 15
News
For the kayaker marooned on the ex-
posed shore of a Scottish loch in mid-
winter the words that saved him were
“courage, nicer, fountain”.
Jason Woodhouse is one of nearly
4,000 people to have escaped peril by
using What3words, an app that trans-
lates someone’s position anywhere in
the world into a unique three-word
combination. The system, which allows
people to report their location with
minimal phone coverage, has tripled in
popularity with emergency services in
the past year. The app’s developers have
now said that it is used free of charge by
97 police, fire and ambulance services,
80 per cent of Britain’s total.
Mr Woodhouse, 33, a data analyst
from Newcastle, was in a desperate
state when he reported his three-wordlocation identifier in the Cairngorms
on January 4.
His friends had hauled out their kay-
aks to complete their journey on foot
after facing headwinds of 30mph, but
Mr Woodhouse persevered so that he
could bring their firewood. With waves
pushing him back he was forced to land
on a rocky beach from which there was
no exit. He got a single bar of signal
while standing on a boulder, giving himjust enough time to relay his three-
word position to a 999 dispatcher.
He was in the early stages of hypo-
thermia when the mountain rescue
spotted his strobe light. “The helicopter
crew were lifesavers,” he said.
Trevor Baldwin, of Yorkshire Ambu-
lance Service, said that his dispatchers
had used What3words every day since
adopting it in August 2019. “Having this
type of technology integrated withinour emergency operations centre
system has changed the way we are able
to deal with incidents where the loca-
tion isn’t known,” he said. “It has been
particularly helpful when identifying
the locations of road traffic collisions,
but the biggest success story to date was
when it was used to help us find a run-
ner in cardiac arrest who we then man-
aged to resuscitate. Time is precious in
these circumstances.”Searching for a 999 caller in the wilderness? There’s an app for that
Jack Malvern
The RSPB was blamed by Defra for
derailing efforts to bring back a rare
bird of prey to parts of Britain, newly
released emails show.
Officials at the Department for Envi-
ronment, Food and Rural Affairs
(Defra) suspected the charity of influ-
encing conservation groups on the
Continent to stop them providing hen
harrier chicks.
Britain’s leading bird organisation is
adopting a hard line by failing to
support the return of the species while
a dispute rages over accusations that
British gamekeepers kill hen harriers to
stop them attacking grouse.
The Countryside Alliance, which
obtained the documents under free-
dom of information laws, claimed that
the charity had been caught undermin-
ing the reintroduction programme.
The RSPB told The Times that the
decisions by France and Spain not to
provide Britain with chicks “was entire-
ly theirs to make”.
Natural England is trying to reintro-
Tom Knowles
Technology CorrespondentResearchers have built the first ever AI
tool that can tell apart different individ-
ual birds within the same species,
something even the most talented bird-
watchers would be unable to do.
The development could have a radi-
cal effect on the study of birds, allowing
for much more detailed and reliable
monitoring of species over time.
André Ferreira, of the Centre for
Functional and Evolutionary Ecology
in France, said the study “provides the
means of overcoming one of the great-
est limitations in the study of wild birds
— reliably recognising individuals”.
Researchers from France, Germany,
Portugal and South Africa showed the
AI models thousands of images of wild
great tits and sociable weavers, and cap-
tive zebra finches.They had an accura-
cy of 90 per cent for the wild birds and
87 per cent for the zebra finches when
shown images they had not seen before.
The study, in Methods in Ecology and
Evolution, said with enough images the
AI could recognise new birds.Feather in the
cap for top
twitcher AI
Dominic Kennedy Investigations Editor
WASDALE MOUNTAIN RESCUE TEAMT
he irony was
not lost on her
saviours when
they were
called out to an
eight and a half stone
St Bernard stuck on her
way back down from
England’s highest peak
(Tom Knowles writes).
It took several treats,
some gentle persuasion
and the
rearranging of a
stretcher, but a
mountain rescue
team was
eventually able to
carry Daisy off
Scafell Pike.
The particularly
grumpy-looking
dog had collapsed
after suffering
pain in her rear
legs while out with
her owners on
Friday evening.
A call to
Cumbria police led
to 16 volunteers
from Wasdale
Mountain RescueTeam spending
nearly five hours
retrieving Daisy
from the
mountain in the
Lake District.
“Having team
members with
their own
pampered
pooches at
home, and alsoour very own much-
adored search dog Jess,
we recognise the distress
that both an animal can
feel and also that of
their owners,” a
spokesman for the team
said.
“Our members didn’t
need to think twice
about mobilising and
deploying to helpretrieve Daisy off
England’s highest.”
The team said that
they had sought advice
from vets before
beginning the rescue
and were able to assess
Daisy’s condition and
administer pain relief
before bringing her
down without distress.
“After a little persuasionand a bit of arranging
the stretcher to become
dog-friendly, and of
course plenty more
treats, the 55kg Daisy
very quickly settled
down with her chin
resting on the head
guard, having realised
that we were trying to
help her,” the
spokesman said. “Fromthere on, apart from the
odd little adjustment,
the evacuation was
found to be not that
much different from a
normal adult evacuation
which, of course, is the
bread and butter of our
team, which we have
done hundreds of times
before.”
St Bernard dogs were
first bred in the 1600s to
help with rescue
operations in the
western Alps in Italy and
Switzerland. Although
they are often portrayed
in literature and film as
having a small barrel of
brandy around their
necks that was supposed
to help avalanche
victims to stay warm
while awaiting rescue,
there is no historical
evidence for such a
practice.
The rescue team
spokesman added,
tongue firmly in cheek,
that Daisy “apparently
feels a bit guilty and
slightly embarrassed
about letting down the
image of her cousins
bouncing across the
Alpine snows.”St Bernard
in rescue
drama...
its own
Daisy is brought safely
down Scafell Pike by a
mountain rescue team
after suffering pain in her
rear legs and collapsingT
n
r
fr
m L m t p p hRSPB ‘shot down return of rare
bird of prey over illegal killings’
duce the hen harrier, a hawk-like
species that feeds on rodents and small
birds, to southern England. The British
population was wiped out in the Victo-
rian era by gamekeepers protecting
grouse moors. It has recovered in places
but never fully in England, which in
2017 had only ten fledglings.
Defra’s hen harrier strategy is resist-
ed by the RSPB over a “brood manage-
ment” scheme in which nests would be
moved off grouse moors.
British officials sought chicks over-
seas but in France the Ligue pour la
Protection des Oiseaux resisted.
“The opposition may be in some
way in order to support the
RSPB’s opposition to a brood
management scheme being
run by Natural England, which
also forms part of the Hen Harrier
Action Plan,” Defra wrote.
The night before Natural England’s
envoy met Spanish officials in May last
year, he was “emailed by a senior offi-
cial in the SEO [Spanish Birdlife part-
ner] to say they were not supportive of
the project... We know the RSPB hadorchestrated this late intervention [the
SEO simply cited the standard RSPB
position]. The interference continues.”
The RSPB denied intervening and
told Natural England there “may have
been some misunderstanding”.
Simon Lee, project manager for the
reintroduction, wrote: “SEO stated
they were acting on behalf of their
friends, the RSPB. The 11th-hour inter-
vention from SEO had been prompted
and in part worded by RSPB — the
SEO refers to concerns over persecu-
tion levels in the UK and birds flying
north to be shot. Clear lines from RSPBand not something SEO has a clue
about.”
A Defra note states: “Due to contact
by RSPB with conservation groups in
France and Spain Natural England has
been unable to source chicks. Without
chicks the reintroduction cannot go
ahead and we cannot stop the RSPB.”
Tim Bonner, chief executive of the
Countryside Alliance, said the matter
raised “huge questions about the
RSPB’s priorities”.
Martin Harper, RSPB director of
conservation, said: “It would be wrong
for us to support the reintroduction
scheme until the main reason for harri-
er declines — illegal killing — stops.”
Rob Cooke, Natural England direc-
tor of greener farming and fisheries,
said: “We actively collaborate with
the RSPB... to implement
the joint Hen Harrier
Action Plan. We are
speaking to author-
ities in France and
Spain about how they can help
us achieve this.”
[email protected]SHen harriers in England
have not revived after
Victorian persecution