WWF to use drones to protect wildlife
Conservation group WWF has announced plans to deploy surveillance drones in either Africa or Asia by the end of the year. A second country is to follow in 2014, and it is hoped that by 2015 the drones will be operational in four sites with different terrains. The drones are part of a $5 million high-tech push to combat the illegal wildlife trade.
The three-year project has been funded by a Google grant which was awarded to WWF last December. The project involves combining data from three sources; unmanned aerial vehicles, cheap mobile phone technology used to track animal movements and handheld devices carried by rangers. The combined use of the three technologies is "unprecedented" according to Allan Crawford, project leader for the WWF Google technology project.
Speaking of the challenges faced by rangers, Crawford said: "It's a very scary prospect for [them]…they're outnumbered. There aren't enough resources to tackle this in South Africa at the moment. This is where the new technologies comes in, to help them."
News of the Google technology project comes as the South African government have announced the loss of 82 rhinos to poaching since the new year. Last year a record 668 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa alone. A single shipment of ivory seized in Malaysia at the end of last year weighed almost as much as all the illegally traded ivory seized since 2011, which was itself a record year for seizures.
Crawford said of the situation: "We've got to crack this problem because it's getting out of control. The poachers seem to have figured out how to get round existing anti-poaching methods." Drones have already been employed elsewhere by conservationists, for example in the monitoring of orang-utans in Sumatra, and rhinos and other wildlife in the Laikipia district of Kenya. One South African rhino farmer is reportedly planning to put 30 drones into the sky himself. The Google technology project by WWF however, is unique in its combination of the three technologies.
It is hoped that the WWF will announce the two countries selected for the project within weeks.
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