Bid to protect rhinos wins Google award

State-of-the-art camera traps are to be installed to prevent elephant and rhino poaching in Tsavo National Park, Kenya.

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) won a £500,000 grant for the project from Google's Global Impact Awards.

Cameras with automated sensors will be deployed in poaching hotspots within the next few months, which will transmit images of any intruders.

The cameras can also detect vehicles from vibrations, and triangulate the sound of gunshots, allowing park rangers to locate poachers and intervene immediately.

"These life-saving cameras will help stop the slaughter of rhinos, which has seen more than 1,000 killed in Africa in just eighteen months," says Professor Jonathan Baillie, ZSL's field conservation director.

"Over the next two years we plan to cut poaching in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park by 50 per cent and help park rangers protect endangered rhinos, elephants, and more, before it’s too late."

The project received thousands of votes from the public, placing it ahead of nine other candidates for the Google award. Celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Derren Brown and Edith Bowman also lent their support to the project.