
Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers - wslh
http://www.slate.com/blogs/trending/2012/12/07/rhino_poaching_google_pays_for_drones_to_fight_ivory_trade.html
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_djo_
This is welcome from Google, as focused aid of this sort can often have an
outsize effect, but we must be careful to avoid believing this can solve the
problem.

For one, sophisticated UAVs that are much more capable than those the WWF is
getting are already being used to combat rhino poaching. SANParks, the state
agency responsible for South Africa's state-run national parks, has deployed
the Seeker II military-spec UAV[0], ground radar, thermal imagers, cameras and
dedicated teams of heavily armed rangers in the Kruger National Park, one of
Africa's largest wildlife reserves. All anti-poaching resources have been
placed under the command of Major General Johan Jooste, a highly-regarded
retired military commander and a rewards program giving approximately US$ 10
000 to anybody whose tip-off results in the arrest of a poacher and about US$
100 000 for a tip-off leading to the arrest of the head of a poaching
syndicate has been created. At the same time the South African Army has
deployed units in both the border patrol and anti-poaching role in certain
parks.

These measures are all helping, but it's important to understand just what an
impossible task this is. SANParks's 19 national parks alone cover 37 000 km²,
that's larger than Belgium, Israel, Lebanon and most US states. Moreover those
19 parks are dispersed across South Africa's 1.2 million km² and many of them
are on the border of neighbouring countries from which many of these poachers
come. It also doesn't include the hundreds of private wildlife reserves across
the country which have been badly hit by rhino poaching. As the US has
discovered on its southern border with Mexico, trying to prevent small bands
of people from crossing a border this large is impossible even with UAVs,
manned aircraft and massive resources.

So technology alone is not going to solve this, though it and other measures
are hopefully going to help reduce the rate at which rhinos are being killed.
The only long-term solution is to somehow stop the demand for rhino horn from
Asia and thus remove the profit motive for poaching rhinos in the first place.

[0] The Seeker II is a 9-12 hour endurance UAV with all the standard
surveillance gear such as FLIR cameras that is being provided free of charge
by Denel, a South African arms manufacturer. The intention is to supplement
that with a longer-ranged model, the Seeker 400, sometime next year. At the
same time they're finalising development of a much smaller UAV, the Hungwe,
that can be deployed by ranger teams for short-range surveillance.

~~~
sandGorgon
>demand for rhino horn from Asia

I think that is better classified as "traditional Chinese medicine".

The other (more scientific?) traditional medicine in Asia - Ayurveda - has no
usage of elements like rhino horn, tiger blood, etc.

~~~
eru
Or just generalized to "reduce demand for rhino horn".

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guelo
The USAF's and CIA's use of drones in the Middle East has sparked the
imagination across all kinds of projects such as this one. But the reality is
that military-style drones that can stay aloft for days are extremely
expensive to purchase and to operate. The well-known Predator drone, for
example, costs $4 million per airplane, and it requires a classified global
satellite network, an uplink station manned with three operators, and a
deployment crew with a forward operating station. It is only cheap when
compared to the absurdly high cost of manned fighter jets and spy planes.

Comparing them to what is available for civilian use is a joke. Normally what
you see are shaky line-of-sight quad-copters that can stay up for 20 minutes.

~~~
pmorici
The government isn't exactly known for procuring things at an economical price
or designing for efficiency. I mean just look at the cost difference between a
space shuttle launch vs SpaceX.

~~~
podperson
SpaceX's 2010 technology sure kicks NASA's 1975 technology's butt. Look, I
love Elon Musk and SpaceX as much as the next guy but probably most of the
cost advantage has to do with improved technology (especially materials
science).

~~~
htf
But then one has to wonder why NASA's technology has not improved during the
37 years that came after 1975 despite a budget of over 10 billion dollars a
year.

~~~
ekianjo
Because NASA has no incentive to become more efficient. When you are a
national organization the incentive is to keep your budget as high as possible
and spend as much as you can to prove that you need the money, every year.
That is precisely why such businesses are ripe for disruption, because they
were never built for achieving a lot while spending less. If we ever see Space
Tourism develop, it will not be through NASA operations, that is for sure.

~~~
philwelch
NASA's mission is not to efficiently commercialize space technology. That's
the sort of thing best left to the private sector.

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ghshephard
Well, that's one off the list:
[http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/news/...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/news/110-predictions-
for-the-next-110-years)

Listed in the category "2012—2022" " Drones will protect endangered species. "

~~~
eurleif
Not really a prediction, is it? That article is dated December 10th. This one
is dated December 7th.

~~~
graue
And the WWF's release[1] is dated December 4th.

[1] [http://worldwildlife.org/stories/google-helps-wwf-stop-
wildl...](http://worldwildlife.org/stories/google-helps-wwf-stop-wildlife-
crime)

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lwhi
I can't help feel there are tangential aims for a project like this. Surely
part of the reasoning for making an investment in a project like this, is the
advancement of the technology involved?

Bearing in mind the premier use for similarly advanced unmanned aircraft, is
it too cynical to believe the project might end up advancing military aims?

~~~
DanBC
$5million is a tiny amount of money and is unlikely to advance the state of
the art in military drone technology.

Other people in the thread have mentioned the stuff involved in the predator
drones.

Google may get some nice aerial photography for Maps; or they may get some
limited research for unmanned vehicles.

> I can't help feel there are tangential aims for a project like this.

Even if there are, well, it's not a bad thing.

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monochromatic
Alternate title: Google Invests $5M in Spy Drones

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malbs
I watched a doco a while back about a bloke named Damien Mander, who was ex-
SAS and served in Afghanistan/Iraq, and was now living in South Africa
training wardens to protect the elephants and rhinos. He said that the one
tool he wished he had access to was predator UAVs like the ones they had in
Afghanistan, because the amount of ground it could cover in one flight was
huge compared to troops on-foot (or even in ground based vehicles). He had
hooked up with a Melbourne based aviation engineer to design a UAV themselves,
with thermo imaging equipment etc. The problem for me was that it was
essentially a radio controlled plane, complete with the buzzing sound of the
little nitro engine. Seemed like an easy target for a poacher to just shoot it
out of the sky.

I really hope Google are putting a predator style UAV in this guys hands.

~~~
fraserharris
Hitting a small moving UAV (30+ km/hr) at any reasonable altitude (500 - 1,000
ft) would be a very challenging shot. Doing it at night...

~~~
dfc
The issue with louder low flying drones is not the risk of being shot down the
problem is alerting the target. But in a anti-poacher situation this may be
less of an issue than in a armed conflict.

~~~
jerf
In a way, the most effective use of this money would be to alert the target
well in advance, in fact, before they even go hunting is best. Spend the bulk
of the money on advertising the use of these drones, produce a couple of
"hits" for the technology (even if the hits are, shall we say, lightly
staged), and you will probably get better results that simply pouring all the
money into actual drones.

You can't skip that step or the deception will be found out, but you sure
could magnify your investment.

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bronty
There's also a campaign on indiegogo to help a Kenyan conservancy adopt drone
technology: <http://www.indiegogo.com/olpejeta>

Support levels include drone flight time, trips to the conservancy, and naming
an animal you can track with the drones' RFID technology.

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cstavish
This is a cool initiative, but when happens after the poachers are "exposed"?

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eigenvector
They may be hunted down and shot.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10992502>

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CamperBob2
It would probably violate multiple international treaties, but I know I'd be
willing to pay $50 or so per shot, if the drone had an onboard weapon that
could be aimed over IP. That would do some good in the world, and would be
pretty exciting as well.

For safety, targeting could be supervised, and approval to fire issued or
withheld, by the company selling the camera time. It's something that should
probably be licensed by the host country, for the sake of legitimacy.

~~~
adventured
It would be "pretty exciting" to kill humans rather than arrest them and bring
them to justice?

I don't think there's anything you could ever say to justify that position. It
gives me the impression that you're a maniac.

~~~
xiaoma
Excitement is pretty natural if you look at it rationally. It's when killing
humans _isn't_ exciting, or worse yet when it's routine or boring, that you
really have to worry.

~~~
denom
It's worrying when someone is exited to kill people.

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retrogradeorbit
Time for some positive drone PR. It helps divert disapproval of double tapped
child murdering and paves the way for domestic abuse.

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muriithi
I hope this will reduce incidents like these[0].

My fear is that it might be too little too late.

[0] [http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-99386/seven-rhinos-
is...](http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-99386/seven-rhinos-isiolo-shot-
dead-poachers-10-days)

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xuzhanleon
Kill Decision is becoming real:
<http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13542606-kill-decision>

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acd
I hope we can save the Tigers there is around 3000-39000 left in the world by
building up an sustainable tourist industry around them.

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ahmad19526
What if they just spent the $5M on developing and working with the people who
are in need of poaching for a living...

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coderhs
Excellent Initiative..

~~~
muratmutlu
Great and exciting use of technology, happy to read about Google doing stuff
this. Really hope they publish the effects of it good or bad

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alimoeeny
Who do you think these poachers are?

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samuel1604
way to go google, fix the world! it's only an algorithm problem

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camus
... And evades taxes to Bermuda ...

