Air Shepherd drones keep a watchful eye over endangered species

The Maryland mathematicians who designed Air Shepherd’s software are the same brains behind a system used by the US military to predict where roadside bombs would likely be placed in Iraq and Afghanistan (Photo: Air Shepherd)

For under-resourced park rangers patrolling the porous, poacher-friendly borders of Africa’s national parks, conserving the ailing rhino and elephant populations is certainly a tall order. With tusks and horns only yielding more and more cash on black markets all across Asia, poaching numbers are on the rise and the future of local species hangs in the balance. But equipped with drones, big data and high-tech infrared cameras, one organization says it has the capabilities to start stemming the tide.

Dubbed Air Shepherd, the initiative is backed by the Lindbergh Foundation, a not-for-profit that aims to preserve the environment through the use of technology. It launched the project in response to illegal poaching problem in southern Africa, a crisis it says saw 40,000 elephants and 1,200 rhino killed in a single year. The group estimates that the current rate of hunting will see both become extinct within 10 years.

Air Shepherd’s answer? Use flying robots to beef up the patrol teams. It has carried out a pilot phase in southern Africa over the last two years, which saw more than 400 missions and logged 1,000 hours of flying time over a region where as many as 19 rhinos were normally poached each month. It says during its testing period over six months, not a single rhino was killed.

Air Shepherd’s system uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with infrared cameras and GPS. These are designed to tackle after dark-poaching between the hours of 6:30 and 8:30 pm, a period which sees the poachers make their move after surveying animal positions during daylight. Once the curtain of darkness is lowered, the hunters move in and kill the animals, quickly making off with their horns and tusks.

The engine room of Air Shepherd’s solution is actually nowhere near Africa. Rather, it is housed at the University of Maryland in the US, where a supercomputer processes historical data about the location, such as poaching locations and times and where the poachers are entering and exiting the park. Taking into account where the elephants and rhinos are traveling and maps of the terrain, the software predicts the routes that the poachers will use to hunt their prey and dictates the flight paths of the drones accordingly.

Dubbed Air Shepherd, the initiative is backed by the Lindbergh Foundation, a not-for-profit that aims to preserve the environment through the use of technology. It launched the project in response to illegal poaching problem in southern Africa, a crisis it says saw 40,000 elephants and 1,200 rhino killed in a single year. The group estimates that the current rate of hunting will see both become extinct within 10 years.

Air Shepherd’s answer? Use flying robots to beef up the patrol teams. It has carried out a pilot phase in southern Africa over the last two years, which saw more than 400 missions and logged 1,000 hours of flying time over a region where as many as 19 rhinos were normally poached each month. It says during its testing period over six months, not a single rhino was killed.

Air Shepherd’s system uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with infrared cameras and GPS. These are designed to tackle after dark-poaching between the hours of 6:30 and 8:30 pm, a period which sees the poachers make their move after surveying animal positions during daylight. Once the curtain of darkness is lowered, the hunters move in and kill the animals, quickly making off with their horns and tusks.

The engine room of Air Shepherd’s solution is actually nowhere near Africa. Rather, it is housed at the University of Maryland in the US, where a supercomputer processes historical data about the location, such as poaching locations and times and where the poachers are entering and exiting the park. Taking into account where the elephants and rhinos are traveling and maps of the terrain, the software predicts the routes that the poachers will use to hunt their prey and dictates the flight paths of the drones accordingly.

Read more: Air Shepherd drones keep a watchful eye over endangered species