This week on his excellent documentary series “Africa” David Attenborough focussed on the huge drop in numbers of elephants and rhino across Africa and the massive and ever-increasing problem of poaching for ivory. As he able demonstrated the poaching frenzy that is going on across Africa means that in a few years they may well be no more elephants in places such as Zambia or rhino in Tanzania. It is that serious. Just today I was listening to a radio report discussing the poaching crisis in Gabon and how the elephant population there had dropped to virtually nothing through poaching. It is going on across every African nation that is home to the elephant and rhino; from Namibia in the west to Mozambique in the east, from Kenya in the north to South Africa in the south.
Also this week came news that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) had partnered with Google in the battle against poaching. This clever move enables the WWF to use and adapt new technologies from large technical corporations like Google. These new technologies include the creation and deployment of a fleet of anti-poacher drones – unmanned aerial vehicles. This may well sound like something from a spy movie but the battle against poachers is a serious one that needs all the help it can get. Google have awarded the WWF a fantastic $5 million dollar grant through its new scheme of Global Impact Awards. The awards scheme aims to provides support to organisations using the latest technology and new innovative approaches and the WWF’s battle against poaching is one of the lucky recipients. The WWF are going to use the technology to monitor and hopefully win their fight to preserve the most endangered species we have which includes elephants and rhinos in Africa and in Asia the tiger.
There are many ways technology will be used in this monitoring programme such as unmanned aerial survey aircraft, wildlife tagging technology and ranger patrolling which will be aided by new analytical software and improved communication systems. These will all be combined together to crack down on poaching gangs and act as a strong deterrent in the future.
The President and CEO of the WWF, Carter Roberts, has called it “an umbrella of technology” under which they can “protect wildlife from global crime syndicates.” “It’s all about new surveillance tools and patrol systems to stem what has become an explosion in poaching. Otherwise, we could see the end of species like rhinos and elephants in the wild.” As the criminal gangs get richer and with more money they become more sophisticated in their techniques then so too must the organisations fighting against them. “We face an unprecedented poaching crisis. Killings are way up. We need solutions that are as sophisticated as the threats we face. This pushes the envelope in the fight against wildlife crime,” Roberts added.
