Using Raspberry Pi and iOS App To Catch Rhino Poachers

v3rgEz writes "Cambridge Consultants has rigged together about a hundred motion-triggered cameras around Kenyan watering holes to help catch and dissuade elephant poachers. 'The challenge was to create a remote monitoring system that was robust enough to withstand extreme weather conditions and animal attacks and could be easily hidden in any surroundings – all within the available budget,' according to one of the projects leads. And to help make sure all those cameras are being monitored, the team has released an iOS app that lets users review, tag, and flag images, tracking what kinds of animals pass by and keeping an eye open for any human predators on the prowl."

Comments

Re:ulterior motives

[solarissmoke]

If you REALLY want to get the message across (desperate times call for desperate measures?) then having public executions for poachers seem like it would be a sizable deterrent for teens who want to make a quick buck (ivory is >$1000/kilo)

If only it were that simple. The poaching industry is not built around a bunch of hoodlums with guns making a "quick buck". It goes all the way up to the highest levels of government, with lots of people taking their cut along the way. There is complicity by people at all the stages of the process of getting the horns/tusks from the animal to the people who consume it. And if you think only poor people are involved in poaching, you couldn't be further from the truth.

There are insiders in the very organisations that are supposed to be protecting the animals who leak information to the poachers so they know when and where to strike without being caught. There are crooked officials at customs checkpoints who let the illicit goods through the ports. There are politicians and lawmakers who are handsomely rewarded for not enforcing existing punishments and not instituting harsher ones. Punishing the guy who pulls the trigger, however harshly, isn't going to stop all of this. He will be replaced by someone else equally desperate for money. And where poverty is rife, it's always worth the risk.

There are some more realistic ways to address to the problem:

• - Try and educate the ignorant people in China and other (mostly far-Eastern) countries who think horns and tusks have magical powers (I am not optimistic about this, but hey, we have to try).
• - Research ways to artificially create horn/tusk material in the lab (similar to what was done with pearls), and flood the market with it so that the value of the product plummets.
• - Work on making the living animals more valuable to the local community. Engage them in conservation efforts and make sure they receive a meaningful portion of the income from tourism activity. There are efforts being made to do this but the government could do a lot more.

Unfortunately all of these things take time, which is fast running out.