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The global COVID-19 lockdown is now taking its toll on endangered wildlife like elephants and rhinos around the globe. Global lockdowns have caused a sharp drop in Africa’s wildlife tourism revenue. Wildlife tourism in Africa is a $169 billion industry. It employs 24.6 million people and is often the only employer in areas where wildlife thrives. The tourism business has helped curb poaching in several ways. First, tourists act as a deterrent to poachers. However, with fewer tourists, there are fewer tourist vehicles in parks. They are no longer a deterrent to poachers.

Africa’s wildlife tourism revenue funds help to sustain wildlife reserves across the continent. At many of the reserves more than half of the budget comes from tourism revenues. Matt Brown, with The Nature Conservancy’s Africa program, told ABC News that tourist fees support rangers. Fees such as bed-night, and conservation fees help pay for the rangers‘ salaries. The fees also pay fuel for airplane patrols, and more – hampering security and opening the game reserves to poachers. 

Vulnerable to poaching

Without money to support the rangers — and the highly endangered animals they protect – elephants gorillas and rhinos — are left vulnerable to poachers. The amount of poaching is on the rise because COVID-19 has reduced funding for law enforcement in wildlife areas. 

CNBC reports that highly organized illegal poaching threatens to send African wildlife into extinction over the next several decades. Most vulnerable to extinction are the black and white rhinos, lions, and elephants. The black rhino population has plummeted 97.6% since 1960. The lion population is down 43% in the last 21 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund. At least 35,000 African elephants are killed each year. There are only 1,000 mountain gorillas and 2,000 Grevy’s zebras that remain on the continent.

According to reports, six elephants were killed on one June day in Ethiopia’s Mago National Park. That compares to 10 in that nation for all of 2019. Officials suspect that most elephant tusks and finished products are shipped to China and south-east Asian countries. To make matters worst, in 2017 the Trump administration rolled back the ban on hunting elephants. The Trump policy allows elephant remains to be imported into the United States. Conservationists believe that elephants in the wild could be extinct within 10 years due primarily to poaching. 

Using IoT to protect elephants

Extinction does not have to be the “new normal.” FierceElectronics reported on a collaboration using Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to protect elephants in the wild from extinction by developing a next-generation elephant tracking collar. The collaboration between Phoenix-based electronic components firm Avnet’s developer community Hackster.io, and conservation group Smart Parks which focuses on technology to protect endangered species, are running a design competition called ElephantEdge.

The ElephantEdge challenge asks developers to leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies that can help humans protect elephants from extinction. ElephantEdge will combine software, machine learning (ML), and hardware to build the next generation elephant collars. The next generation collars will have better battery life, longer range, and accuracy that can be worn by elephants in the wild.

Elephant IoT collars

The elephant IoT collars will have sensors for audio pickup, location, and position as well as low-power, wide-area antennas that provide wireless connectivity. The new collar will use hardware and software from different vendors:

• Bluetooth 5.0, Thread, and Zigbee connectivity via Nordic Semiconductor chips.
• GPS by u-blox.
• Low-power wide-area (LPWA) antennas by Taoglas;
• microSD storage by Western Digital.
• Ultra-low-power LoRaWAN transceiver from Semtech.
• Accelerometer,  eCompass, and audio sensors from STMicroelectronics.

The ElephantEdge Challenge requires developers to build machine learning models with Avnet’s Edge Impulse Studio and tracking dashboards with Avnet’s IoTConnect– which will provide useful tracking, health vitals, motion, environmental anomalies, and more. ElephantEdge challenge looks to create machine learning  models like:

• Poaching Risk Monitoring: Identify an increased risk for poaching by learning when an elephant is moving into a high-risk area and send real-time notifications to park rangers.
• Human Conflict Monitoring: Prevent conflict between humans and elephants by sensing and alerting when an elephant is heading into an area where farmers live by detecting if any mobile phones or WiFi hotspots are near.
• Elephant Musth Monitoring: Detect and alert when an elephant bull is in musth by using motion and acoustic sensors to discern this state of erratic, loud, and aggressive behavior.

• Elephant Activity Monitoring: Collect data on the general behavior of the elephant, such as when it is drinking, eating, sleeping, etc. by using accelerometer data.
• Communication Monitoring: Listen for vocal communications between elephants via the onboard microphone. 

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This is an example of when IoT tech can do good for the world – protect animals like elephants, gorillas, rhinos, lions, and polar bears which cannot protect themselves from extinction.

Nobody is going to get rich doing this work – challenge winners will receive an Apple Watch 3 and a collectible t-shirt as prizes – but the world will be a better place.

By the end of 2020, ten next-generation elephant collars will be produced for Smart Parks to deploy in selected African parks, in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund. Final software and hardware will be documented and shared freely under an open-source license. 

Stay safe out there!

Related articles

• Guarding the Giraffe (Michigan Alumnus)
• Photos: Donald Trump’s Sons Awesome At Killing Elephants And Other Wildlife (Gothamist)

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.