African elephants threatened by poaching are getting a helping hand from a tech savvy University of British Columbia (UBC) student.
In a recent study, lead author and UBC doctorate student Jake Wall details how the advanced real-time tracking technology he has developed is being used to monitor and protect nearly 100 African elephants in Kenya and South Africa.
Elephants outfitted with tracking devices have their locations sent to researchers’ servers in near-real time, according to Wall. He said he has developed a series of algorithms that detect when an elephant has slowed down or stopped moving, indicating it may be injured or killed.
The system is designed to trigger an alarm that is sent out over email and text message to a network of conservationists and rangers.
“If you have subscribed to a given animal you would receive an alert telling you something’s happening, and then using the Google Earth system, you can quickly check on that individual and if it does look like there really is a problem you can initiate a response, send vehicles, or an airplane to check on the elephant,” Wall said.
Wall, born in Ottawa, completed his high school education in Kenya. He said the elephants he saw there while on safari captured his heart.
“I really got attached to African wildlife, but elephants in particular. It’s hard not to fall in love with them,” he said.
Wall began volunteering with the organization Save the Elephants 10 years ago, before deciding to do his doctorate on elephant movement ecology.
He said poaching is a complex problem and better monitoring and tracking of animals is only part of the solution.
“Right now the demand for ivory is just so high that people are willing to do anything to get it,” Wall said.
Poaching of African elephants is driven by demand for ivory from Asia’s growing middle class. According to Save the Elephants’ website, China’s fascination with ivory has a long history, dating back hundreds of years to traditional ivory carvings. Today in many Asian countries, ivory is a highly sought after status symbol.
Wall said better public education in Asia about the true costs of poaching could curb demand for ivory.
Combatting poverty and providing alternative sources of income in areas where humans and elephants co-exist is essential to stopping poaching, he said.
An elephant tusk can fetch $200-300 from middlemen brokers who transport the ivory to Asia to sell at a profit, according to Wall.
The money an African poacher can make from selling a tusk is over double the average monthly wage in that part of the world, he said.
“A lot of people have said that if there were other means to make an income they wouldn’t kill elephants. I think everyone kind of intrinsically knows that it’s wrong but it’s just that there’s so much money involved right now,” Wall said.
Wall said he and his team are continuing to increase the tracking system’s capacity to monitor more animals. He said while technology is becoming increasingly useful to conservationists, it isn’t going to stop poaching on its own.
“We also need programs on the ground and working with local communities,” Wall said.
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