Scare animals with noise? The Haute Touche reserve and the SNCF are working on it

In her little camouflaged watchtower, Anna Terrade silently scrutinizes the deer. It has a computer, a camera and large speakers. His job: to test several animal noises to make the group of deer-guinea pigs react. The objective: to find the sound that will scare them permanently. It’s acoustic scaring

Acoustic scaring could be the miracle solution. “The majority of train delays are due to accidents with wild animals, which by a snowball effect affects a whole part of the traffic” says Yannick Matillon, engineer and regional environmental coordinator at SNCF. Each year more than a thousand collisions with wildlife are recorded in France.

Animals must therefore be kept away from the train tracks. The group has therefore joined forces with ENES, a bioacoustics laboratory, and the National Museum of Natural History. She supports a thesis by Anna Terrade entitled “Acoustic scaring of large terrestrial mammals: development of a tool applicable to the railway network”. For her research, she settled in the Haute-Touche zoological reserve, near Obterre.

“Animals, like humans, get used to regular noises. Deer and wild boar are now used to hearing the sound of the train, they are not afraid of it. My goal is to find a unique sound, to which they can’t get used to” says the young doctoral student.

A new “horn-cry” on the trains

Two tracks for the installation of the selected future noise: “There may be fixed speakers, near areas with high animal density, or the idea would be to place a buzzer directly on the train” says Yannick Matillon. Important clarification: the “horn” will not be used near towns and homes but in forest areas, far from local residents.

The thesis started a year ago and should be returned to the SNCF in the spring of 2024.