Something close to my heart, I am currently ramping up for a radio collar trial in South Africa with some new technology. Rhinos are just one animal in great danger. Time to redress the balance. GM
by Abdul Gani
Kaziranga National Park, for the first time is to witness a test flight of the much anticipated unmanned aircraft on Monday in presence of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) Scientist, Dr. K. Ramesh who leads the monitoring programme, said Rakibul Hussain, Minister for Environment and Forests at press conference today. This test is to begin tomorrow and extend till April 11 so as to understand all measures that will be required for implementation of the unmanned aircraft for better surveillance at the national park.
It is to be mentioned that Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has been pressurising the Central Ministry for a CBI enquiry in to the unabated poaching of endangered one horn rhinoceros. The CBI has now accepted the State Government’s request to probe into this matter. Hussain also said that the Chief Minister has welcomed CBI’s gesture and has promised to extend full support to control the illegal activities at this national park. The unmanned aircraft is one of the measures undertaken by the State Forest Department and National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) which could be one effective measure to keep a track of events at the national park. Minister also emphasised that use of this advance technology will help to monitor unwanted movements of the poachers and thus keep a track. Though a clearance is yet to be acquired from the Defence Authority but once the test is cleared the Minister is hopeful for its implementation at the earliest.
The minister ascertained that an unmanned aerial vehicle would also soon be inducted for better surveillance of the park to prevent poaching of rhinos and other wildlife. He also informed about a workshop to be held on April 20 at Kaziranga wherein Keshav Kumar, Joint Director, CBI from Mumbai will train the Field Directors of North East and Central India to combat and sharpen their investigative directives against such poaching.
Comments
Yes, this is our solution from ResearchDrones, developed for ConservationDrones.
Best
-Simon
Found some further info on this.
article
Articles suggest a Maja platform prepared by Research Drones - an outfit with links to the Conservation Drones team. Great work - love to hear more about it.
MJ
hi gary! what i understand is that the UAV would collect data form the radio collars. what is the maximum radial distance from which a glider type UAV can collect data from caribou type radio collars. ofcourse it makes a lot of sense using a UAV then manual flying. UAV can cover lot of area withih an hour. also chk. www.conservationsdrones.org
which park/country you are doing your project.
I absolutely am amazed at the great things you use folks use UAS for. Keep up the good work! :)
Best Wishes,
Josh
It is one of those things that just makes sense once all the bits of tech are playing nicely.
I will be using a tethered balloon in my next job as my piloting skills aren't quite up to 'free ranging' aircraft yet.
So we've hijacked this thread - perhaps there needs to be a biologists group?
and what happened to the Conservation page over on SUAS news?
MJ
Michael - It sounds like at least four of us (from the postings) are working in this direction.
With the availability, and growing use of radio collars , some natural resource departments are looking into how to gather the data more often, with a smaller budget.
By the way, I really liked your video. We set up our airframe (sort of how you did, but we have a fixed wing). If we do this again, I will send (share) you some of our data out-comes since it now seems this is an issue that some of us share.
Cheers, Byron
Sounds good. Good luck...
Cheers, byron
Is the radio tracking undertaken manually or autonomously?
I wonder how many of us are all trying to do the same thing???
MJ
Also interested, nice time of the year to be down in the park too
The trial quite by chance is right on my door step. Jackal and Serval to be caught and collared hopefully in the next two weeks and then the fun starts. I am very slowly building a super simple motor glider. Pushing for less than $100 to build and at least 100 hours of operation without much love. I have been tuning an APM 2 that I have in another similar sized motor glider and today rolled over 10 hours flight time with it. I never add anything else until I have flown 10 hours and my eyes and thumbs are happy with what to expect.
As I type this jackal calling outside so not much tracking required for them. I will make the airframe plans available if the thing flies properly!
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