Finding Hi-Tech Ideas to Protect Poached and Hunted Animals
Action Alert from All-Creatures.org

FROM

League Against Cruel Sports
January 2016

ACTION

The search is on to find Britain’s best hi-tech ideas to help protect the world’s poached, hunted and persecuted animals.

The newly launched Internet of Things Animal Challenge is seeking imaginative and innovative Internet of Things inventions that use the latest in digital connectivity to tackle cruelty, abuse and exploitation of animals.

Launched by a partnership of animal welfare and conservation organisations and technology firms including the League Against Cruel Sports, IFAW and ConnectTVT, the competition will offer crowd-funding support to those who can show their ideas will clearly make a difference.

Contestants are being challenged to come up with innovative ideas to solve one of 4 hypothetical scenarios:

• Hunter becomes the hunted: How could technology be used to detect and track poachers before they kill their quarry?
• You can’t touch this: How can technology be used to track endangered species without attaching a device to the animal?
• Behave yourself: What technological innovation could increase detection and successful prosecution of those involved in dog fights?
• I know what you did last winter: What new technological methods could help detect and support successful prosecutions of illegal fox, deer and hare hunting

Animal welfare and conservation organisations such as the League Against Cruel Sports and IFAW have a history of using technology to uncover illegal activity and mistreatment of animals. Monitors and observers pioneered the use of high powered cameras and telescopic lenses along with digital cameras, drone technologies and tracking solutions, to capture the barbaric realities of poaching, hunting with dogs and other animal persecution.

But major barriers remain. Some of the issues that need to be resolved include:

• Power: the lifespan of devices are often restricted by batteries running out or solar cells failing
• Impact/environment resistance: large animals can inadvertently damage or destroy devices and dirt, dust, water, heat, sweat etc. also create problems
• Communication: “over the air” communication paths don’t always work, particularly in remote areas
• Data protection: tracking information must be secure to ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands, such as poachers and hunters

The winners will work with the consortium’s board of animal and technology experts to identify the positive and potential negative impacts and the likelihood of technical success. The consortium will work on a crowd funding project to create as many of the devices as possible to pilot in the wild for a range of different applications

The competition runs from 27th January to 21st April, and during that time there will be opportunities to attend brainstorming sessions and check-in events at Grow @ GreenPark in Reading.

For more details about entering the competition, see INTERNET OF THINGS ANIMALS CHALLENGE or contact Louize Clarke at [email protected].

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Thank you for everything you do for animals!

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