Here is a
complicated problem: Endangered elephants live in isolated nature
preserves under the watch of woefully underfunded governments. Poachers
can easily break in, hunt the animals in the dark using night-vision
goggles, and then sell them to buyers in Southeast Asia
(often using the proceeds to buy arms for militias.) Arrayed against
this complex, tragic situation is a curious coalition of local
governments, non-governmental organizations, and robots.
The
fundamental challenge of poaching is that there's more money to be made
in killing and selling rare, exotic, and endangered animals than there
is in protecting them. But drones operated by nonprofits could help stop
this process by tracking poachers back to the traders
that make poaching so profitable. And while non-government drones can't
themselves apprehend illegal traders, they can direct local governments
to the location of the criminals, says Carter Roberts of the World
Wildlife Fund.
We're already beginning to see this nonprofit-drone/local government synthesis in action. On Thursday, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania announced
that the Tanzanian army is deploying drones for anti-poaching
operations. This isn't the first time Tanzania has used its army against
poachers, but the last time was in 1989, and the problem has certainly
re-emerged since then.
To make sure that this time the
anti-poaching efforts actually stick, the Tanzania National Parks
Authority will use drones to monitor people entering the parks. "It is a
kind of improved closed-circuit television camera, which will
facilitate monitoring all parks 24 hours," Shelutete told Sabahi, adding
that the cameras are connected to computers via satellite.
In December, Google funded a WWF
plan to use drones for protecting the world's rare, vulnerable, and
endangered species. Now, it looks like similar plans are taking off
elsewhere, as cheaper technology meets a pressing need that was just not
affordable before. Plus, as Carter Roberts noted,
"The places we're talking about are extremely remote—UAV privacy issues
not that great [because] nobody's supposed to be there." Indeed, this
looks like an ideal case of.
SOURCE: POPSCI.COM
