It’s the early hours of the morning and three men are sitting around a small fire in a game park. They’re huddled together with blankets over their heads. Near them lie a rifle, an axe and a backpack of food. They have been in the park since the day before, carefully making their way to where a rhino cow and her calf were last seen – information supplied by a corrupt staff member. They are waiting for dawn to stalk the animals.

Above them, out of their sight and minds, hovers a drone carefully monitoring them via infrared cameras and feeding images back to the park HQ, where rangers are gathering an anti-poaching team. The drone was dispatched after a hidden sensor, fed by a tiny solar panel and one of hundreds concealed in the park, picked up their movement as they crossed the boundary. The rangers, flown in by helicopter, pounce and the criminals are apprehended. If only it were that simple to catch poachers…

Although poaching has been an issue since the first parks were proclaimed in Africa, in recent years it has become a scourge, controlled by global syndicates taking advantage of an insatiable demand for animal body parts such as horns to be used in potions in the Far East. According to Al Jazeera, the price for rhino horn can reach US$65 000 a kilogram in places such as Vietnam and China. The poachers, who usually work in a gang of three – shooter, tracker and porter – get much less (about US$4 000 to US$9 000 each for a horn), but that is still more than a lifetime’s work for the majority who eke out an existence in poverty-stricken communities surrounding many parks.

Statistics reveal a dire situation. Last year, South Africa lost 448 rhinos to poaching, according to the International Rhino Foundation. The previous year 451 were killed. The organisation estimates that since 2007, 10 000 rhinos have been poached in the country.

This alarming rise in poaching activities has necessitated urgent action and collaboration from various sectors, including the corporate world. Leveraging the power of technology and their expertise, companies are working with private and state-owned game reserves to establish new projects and develop products to make significant contributions to wildlife protection.

‘Technology is vital in this war against poaching,’ Johan Jooste, former chief ranger of the Kruger National Park (KNP), told Defenceweb in November last year. ‘When I joined more than 10 years ago, the mood was shoot to kill, hot pursuit and build a wall, but we who have been to war know that is futile.’ Jooste, a career army officer before retiring from the military, was appointed in 2012 to head the KNP’s 200-odd ranger force – responsible for an area the size of Israel. He immediately instituted a series of projects, including establishing a joint operations centre, believing that up-to-date intelligence and, more importantly, co-ordinating and focusing it, would be key. Although he is enthusiastic about the benefits of technology in the poaching war, he cautions against a belief that tech alone is the solution.

‘Technology makes things possible but only humans make it work; plus the rangers need their own slice of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,’ he said.

He cited what he called ‘drone fever’ – the belief that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) would magically provide an answer to KNP’s problems. ‘There is and will be a role for drones, as their range and payload capacity improve, but in Kruger we found that a ground-based radar system, Project Meerkat, was the best solution for detecting and monitoring incursions by poachers.’

Meerkat, developed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), uses a ground surveillance radar sensor to detect and localise the movements of suspicious objects, and an electro-optic day and night sensor to classify these as either a human or an animal. Information regarding the suspicious object is displayed in a control room on a geo-referenced electronic map, providing actionable intelligence to facilitate the co-ordination of counter-poaching operations.

‘The CSIR has also invested in expanding and optimising the electro-optical system to match different scenarios,’ according to Charl Petzer, CSIR programme manager: integrated security. ‘A smaller and more power-efficient day and night camera, called Rino, and a fully integrated passive camera for shorter ranges, known as Tyto, have been added to our range of sensors.’

Technology is helping in other ways too. According to the Connected Conservation Foundation, an organisation established to help provide tech solutions to wildlife issues, satellite imagery is capturing rhino habitat information from space. ‘We’re mapping water resources, human settlements, grassland cover, road encroachment and invasive plant species to help inform rhino conservation management plans. This is helping Madikwe game reserve and Northern Rangelands Trust make better-informed decisions in adapting to climate-driven events, alongside changing natural resources and human pressures.

‘This new visibility from space is also enabling Madikwe and Sera Wildlife Conservancy to understand where new resources are needed within the park to deploy and relocate security teams and anti-poaching technologies to protect weak spots against poaching threats,’ it states.

Apart from tech delivered from static surveillance points, such as Meerkat and other sensors, or aerial UAVs and satellite imagery, researchers are confident that AI-driven technologies, able to process vast amounts of data and make complex predictions, can help revolutionise wildlife protection and conservation efforts. One of the most powerful applications of AI in wildlife protection is predictive analytics. By analysing historical data on poaching incidents, animal movements and environmental factors, AI algorithms can identify patterns and predict when and where poaching is likely to occur. This early warning system enables rangers and conservationists to pre-emptively deploy resources and patrols to hotspot areas, deterring potential poachers before they strike.

The BBC reports that founding co-director of the University of Southern California Centre for Artificial Intelligence in Society Milind Tambe developed a system called PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security) by applying his research in AI with data from the Uganda Wildlife Authority. They handed over ‘14 years worth of data on poaching activities in Queen Elizabeth National Park, featuring more than 125 000 observations on animal remains, traps and snares and more – all with GPS co-ordinates’.

Tambe and his team were ‘able to create a system that would predict likely hotspots for poaching and direct patrols there to remove traps before they can kill any animals, plus generate new patrol routes to areas that were infrequently monitored’, according to the organisation.

‘Showing results in the lab is not satisfying for anyone – we needed to be able to test our system in Uganda to show it could work,’ Tambe told the BBC. ‘Sure enough, when we asked patrols to monitor areas for a month where the data predicted they could find snares but where they hadn’t thought of going, indeed they did find snares and a poached elephant.’

Although it may often seem as if the war against poaching is an overwhelming struggle, even more advancements in technology will aid wildlife authorities in the fight.

‘The rangers of the near future will be even better connected, wearing “smart” lightweight body armour fitted with sensors; heads-up displays delivering information via glass monocles; smart watches and arm-mounted satellite devices; and effective but non-lethal weapons,’ Jooste told Defenceweb. ‘We could even see rangers riding silently through the bush on electric bikes, or flying in individual personal aviation vehicles, skimming across the bush at treetop level. The sky literally is the limit when it comes to protecting rhinos, with satellites, aircraft balloons and flying rangers all conceivable weapons in the war against poaching.’

Image: Gallo/Getty Images