Military technologies fight elephant poaching
Dual and triple-use technology adds value to a homeland security portfolio; sensors designed to locate enemy soldiers now helps track down illegal hunters; magnetometer detects guns; Cornell adds gunshot locating application to elephant monitoring system
The best homeland security technologies have applications beyond the defense sector. Think biometrics, identity solutions, and surveillance. To hit the trifecta, however, the technology should again rebound to a government sector not at all related to defense — thus creating three entirely separate markets for a single product.
Consider New York City-based Wildland Security. The firm relying on sensor technology originally used to detect the footfalls of enemy soldiers which now now helps wildlife preserves track and locate poachers. The TrailGuard, which is buried alongside jungle and forest paths, also contains magnetometers that detect the presence of iron in the guns illegal hunters would naturally carry along to the kill. When both the footfall and the gun are sensed, the TrailGuard transmits a radio signal to an antenna at the top of the forest canopy, which it then relays to forest rangers over a satellite phone link. “You can tell the number of people in the party and the direction they are walking, so you can come prepared, before the killing starts,” company founder Steve Gulick said.
A similar adaptation: Elephants are, of course, among the most vulnerable to poachers, both because of the high demand for their tusks for decorative and aphridisiacal purposes, and because they naturally make an easy target. Researchers at Cornell have already developed sensor-based “autonomous recording units” that record elephant communications to assist in tracking the lumbering beasts. The devices use specialised low-frequency microphones hidden in trees, each one installed 100 to 200 meters apart to ensure that each call is picked up at a minimum of three points — key for triangulation.
Now the same researchers are adopting technology similar to the ShotSpotter system now in place in a number of American cities. Readers will recall that the technology uses sensors to report shooting locations to law enforcement long before anyone calls 9-11. The Cornell scientists are developing their own software that allows users to identify gunshots from the audio track created by the autnomous recording units mentioned above. We wish the scientists all the good luck in the world. To the poachers we wish nothing but the worst.
-read more in Zeeya Merali’s New Scientist report
