{"id":8829,"date":"2015-04-05T18:03:12","date_gmt":"2015-04-05T18:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8829"},"modified":"2015-04-05T18:03:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-05T18:03:12","slug":"drones-are-hunting-poachers-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8829","title":{"rendered":"Drones are hunting poachers in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>A curious thought crossed my mind when I saw a headline referring to &#8220;poacher-hunting drones.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It was that someone was using unmanned aircraft to actually shoot at poachers caught killing wild animals in Africa. A part of me &#8212; the evil part, no doubt &#8212; wanted that notion to be true.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8212; if they don&#8217;t shoot them to death first.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"clZciwalPf\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/observer.com\/2015\/04\/can-poacher-hunting-drones-save-endangered-species-in-africa\/\">Can Poacher-Hunting Drones Save Endangered Species in Africa?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Can Poacher-Hunting Drones Save Endangered Species in Africa?&#8221; &#8212; Observer\" src=\"https:\/\/observer.com\/2015\/04\/can-poacher-hunting-drones-save-endangered-species-in-africa\/embed\/#?secret=dtVl7qhv9C#?secret=clZciwalPf\" data-secret=\"clZciwalPf\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>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 rhinos\u00a0to make some kind of magic potion or aphrodisiac.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;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 these\u00a0magnificent beasts.<\/p>\n<p>So, the drones are helpful in locating the poachers. It&#8217;s then up to the rangers to do what they must to stop them from killing the animals.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and for the record: I wouldn&#8217;t object at all if governments used the drones to blast these poachers to smithereens.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A curious thought crossed my mind when I saw a headline referring to &#8220;poacher-hunting drones.&#8221; It was that someone was using unmanned aircraft to actually shoot at poachers caught killing wild animals in Africa. A part of me &#8212; the evil part, no doubt &#8212; wanted that notion to be true. Alas, it turns out &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8829\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Drones are hunting poachers in Africa<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[171,199,1459,2378,3497,3617,3933,4265],"class_list":["post-8829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","tag-african-elephants","tag-air-shepherds","tag-drones","tag-ivory-trade","tag-park-rangers","tag-poaching","tag-rhinos","tag-shoot-on-sight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}