UAV trials have been taking place in the Selous Game reserve at Mantra
Tanzania’s Makuyu River Camp. These trials which have been
testing Delair Tech’s DT-26 to match its capabilities with Bathawk
Recons UAV anti-poaching surveillance concept.
One of the great challenges of UAV surveillance for anti-poaching was
developing a solution that can be deployed on the scale of the problem.
The Selous provides the kind of challenging landscape that needs to be
surveyed.
The cooperation, spurred by private sector initiatives but supported by
the Tanzania Civil Aviation, national park authorities and notably the
armed forces, is in stark contrast with for instance Kenya where the brainless
directive by government to forbid such trials has aided poaching, as the
surveillance capacity is simply not there, especially at night.
Ol Pejeta for instance had gone to considerable expense to prepare for the
launch of the so called drones to have real time intelligence information on
any intrusions into the conservancy and other private conservancies
too had waited for the test results before the efforts were brought to a
halt, with the Kenyan government adding salt into the injuries when
claiming that wildlife protection in privately owned conservancies was
inadequate, waving the big stick of taking over such enterprises, a threat
however not yet implemented, largely for the total lack of capacity within
the enforcement apparatus.
It is high time that the region follows the example of Tanzania and performs
trials to establish the impact of increased intelligence gathering and real time
information where poachers are on the loose to then dispatch airborne and
land based interception teams and either arrest or kill the criminals, should
they opt to open fire. |
