Anti-Poaching Tech: Can Heat-Seeking Planes, Drones, and DNA Mapping Save the Rhino?

Poaching is a bigger problem than ever before, and elephants, rhinos, and big cats are vanishing at a disturbing clip. The problem, at its core, is systemic: an increasingly wealthy middle class in China and Southeast Asia has demanded more ivory and exotic animal parts, which are primary ingredients in many traditional medicines. Ground-up rhino horn now has a higher street value than cocaine.

As such, the organized crime syndicates that are responsible for the recent rise in poaching have a massive market to exploit. And since the endangered animals in question live in undeveloped or impoverished nations, they find fewer barriers to their operations; they have access to eager local labor markets and can easily overwhelm law or state park enforcement. Poachers are armed, organized, and often use night vision goggles and helicopters; firefights with rangers aren't uncommon.

So as long as there's a demand for those rare animal parts, conservationists have a hugely uphill battle on their hands. But maybe advanced anti-poaching technology can even the score some. Clearly, nothing's going to do more to stem the rise of poaching than strong regulation, enforcement, and education efforts aimed at alleviating demand at the root. But in the meantime, wildlife preserves in Africa and Asia are turning to readily available technology to win an advantage over poachers.

For instance, South Africa just deployed a "high tech, low-speed recon plane to help track poachers in the region. The Seeker, as its called, was donated by Paramount, Africa's top defense contractor, and comes equipped with "sophisticated heat sensors to detect animals and humans on the ground, and a quiet engine," according to a recent Reuters report.

It will patrol Kruger National Park, which is home to most of the continent's rhinocerouses, and is where the majority of the poaching takes place—this year, 558 endangered rhinos have been killed thus far. The Seeker will be used to scout the region, and will help rangers get a jump on the poaching operations before they strike.

"This is a war. You cannot take a stick to a gunfight," Ivor Ichikowitz, executive chairman of Paramount, told Reuters.

Right now, pinpointing poachers is a clumsy, delayed affair for those rangers lacking a heat-seeking plane. Too many mornings begin with the discovery of slain animal corpses in the brush, and harried efforts to pick up the trail. So a nonprofit organization called Wildland Security has introduced a system of electronic sensors calld TrailGuards that can be buried underground or hidden amongst trees, and that give rangers the precise coordinates of poachers who activate them.

The Economist reports that rangers in the Congo are using the TrailGuards to stop elephant poachers. "They will soon begin burying radio-transmitting metal detectors alongside elephant trails leading into the park," the newspaper writes. "Authorised hikers through the park will be given transponders that tell the detectors who they are, as with the identification friend-or-foe' systems on military aircraft. But when poachers carrying rifles or machetes traipse by a detector, it will send a radio signal to a treetop antenna."

The rangers will then immediately receive the invader's coordinates on a satellite phone. More precise and nimble than camera traps, the system could alert rangers to poachers are still in action.

Yes, drones. They're being used to survey everything else, so why not poachers? The World Wildlife Fund launched unmanned aerial vehicles in Nepal, where poachers are killing endangered rhinos, elephants, and tigers. The WWF has given Nepal a number of GPS-enabled FPV Raptors. They're light, so rangers can launch them by hand. And, according to WWF, "they film the ground below with a still or video camera and can fly a pre-programmed route of about 18 miles at a maximum elevation of 650 feet for up to 50 minutes." Also, they're cheap, and the batteries recharge fast—in about half an hour.

Since their deployment two years ago, just two rhinos have been killed, according to Al Jazeera. That's pretty amazing, considering that one was dying every month before. That's partly because the drones have given authorities better information as to the whereabouts of poachers, but it's partly because the UAVs have scared off criminals. "The presence of a UAV also serves as a deterrent to poachers and illegal loggers since they now know that the parks are being monitored both on the ground and from above," a WWF official noted.

Outside the bush, scientists are working on new ways to map and track the flow of ivory goods once they're smuggled out of Africa and Asia and sold on the black market. Some are turning to DNA mapping techniques to determine where, precisely, the animals were killed.

Scientists at the University of Washington are using techniques similar to forensics used at crime scenes to develop a system of DNA fingerprinting that can identify ivory that was illegally poached from Africa—along with where and how recently. They're using the data to construct a map that will "show the origin of specific elephant DNA fingerprints that will help pinpoint their geographic origins," according to ABC News.

Dr. Richard Ruggiero, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s African Elephant Conservation Fund, told the news network that the system " has the potential to be the most useful tool available to us, in terms of technological advancements in conservation.”

Many rangers and conservationists in wildlife parks across Africa and Asia are still relying on outdated analog communications systems. Think landline phones versus fly-by-night organized crime operations. So sometimes a simple upgrade to digital two-way radios and a functional SMS network does wonders. Go figure.

The Pilansberg National Park discovered as much after getting a donation of comms gear from Altech after running analog for decades.

Even with the aid of all that, however, poachers are still beating the conservationists senseless. There are success stories, like Nepal, but by and large, these beloved species are dying out faster than ever. The sheer might of the poachers' economic incentive drives their operations to be much more aggressive and ambitious. And they too have advanced tech; night-vision, automatic weapons, GPS, helicopters. The best hope for the world's dwindling rhino, elephant, and tiger populations is fixing the demand-side problem—and that's going to take massive paradigm shifts in education and policy.

So, for now—send in the drones.