When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) wanted to fight animal poachers—illegal hunters of wildlife—they decided to bring in an unorthodox weapon: Drones. But these drones were different from the killer Predators of public imagination. Instead, they were unarmed, superlightweight, and users launch them by throwing them into the air—in fact, they are heavily modified model aircraft. After negotiations, Nepal was chosen as a pilot site for the wildlife drones. First launched in mid-2012, the WWF drones offered a new, experimental method of stopping poachers.
The proposed construction of the Northern Gateway Pipeline is slated to go through British Columbia’s Great Bear region. If that happens, the environmentally fragile region is all but guaranteed to sustain any number of oil-related disasters. Of course, this construction is not a forgone conclusion, and WWF Canada is reminding citizens as much in its latest campaign.
Wild tigers have become something of an anomaly on today’s planet. WWF scientists across the 13 countries where they still exist recently completed a census and put the number at about 3,200. Poaching for skins and aphrodisiacs is perhaps the biggest and most obvious problem. But we all have a role where this precipitous decline is concerned. Products that we consume or use each and every day—oils, energy bars, soaps, coffee, tea, biofuels, candy—have all torn up tiger habitat and have played a significant role in obliterating 95% of the 100,000 tigers that once roamed the wilds across Asia. That’s why I’m reaching out to a long list of early adopter companies looking to minimize the impact of raw material extraction on tiger habitat.
That number—3,200—is dangerously low. WWF, our conservation partners in the NGO community, governments, businesses and celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio had all recently drawn a line in the sand for tigers at a high-profile conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, hosted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Saving the species, we’d decided, begins with knowing the whereabouts and behavior of all 3,200 of them. Each and every one. Nepal is leading the charge.
Our to-be-translocated tiger in Chitwan would get set up with a collar that would make it the envy of any well-respecting cat: a TrackTag and GPS Plus-2010. The TrackTag unit would take and record 60,000 locations (called fixes), one every 15 minutes on a single battery. The coupled GPS unit would send live data via satellite every six hours. In about 18 months the collar is designed to drop and send a signal so we can go pick it up, analyze the TrackTag data, and understand the roaming behavior of these big cats. The GPS signal and a little help from our friends at Google would give us something close to a live feed and assist us if the animal seemed to be heading in a direction that would mean trouble.
It’s long, but a good read. Oh, and #tigerblood #tigerblood #tigerblood. Ha ha ha, try and stop us! Meme central right here.