A curious thought crossed my mind when I saw a headline referring to “poacher-hunting drones.”
It was that someone was using unmanned aircraft to actually shoot at poachers caught killing wild animals in Africa. A part of me — the evil part, no doubt — wanted that notion to be true.
Alas, it turns out that the drones are being used to track down poachers and relaying their location to park rangers who then arrest the bad guys — if they don’t shoot them to death first.
Can Poacher-Hunting Drones Save Endangered Species in Africa?
Poaching of elephants and rhinos in Africa long has been a crisis for governments seeking to protect the wildlife. One study says 100,000 elephants have been killed for their ivory in the past three years; rhino populations have been decimated as well, with poachers taking the horns of the rhinosĀ to make some kind of magic potion or aphrodisiac.
A project called Air Shepherds, a U.S.-based operation, has been launched to help African governments in the hunt against poachers. They plan to use drones equipped with state-of-the-art tracking technology. They spot the poachers from the air and transmit the location data to ground forces, who then go to the location to make the arrest.
It’s also known that some countries on the continent have issued shoot-on-sight orders to park rangers who catch poachers in the act of killing theseĀ magnificent beasts.
So, the drones are helpful in locating the poachers. It’s then up to the rangers to do what they must to stop them from killing the animals.
Oh, and for the record: I wouldn’t object at all if governments used the drones to blast these poachers to smithereens.