The World Wildlife Fund is turning to advanced technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a bid to tackle a variety of challenges in field conservation, concentrating mainly on the upsurge in illegal poaching of rhinos, elephants, and other endangered species carried out by increasingly sophisticated and well-equipped cartels.
In December of 2012, the Google Global Impact Awards awarded WWF a grant to explore advanced solutions of integrated technologies. These systems will hopefully enable and empower local forces to monitor their area, improve general operations, security, protect and react in order to reduce current poaching numbers (mainly rhinos, elephants and tigers) and safeguard the park rangers assigned to protect them.
With the grant provided by the Google Global Impact Award over the course of three years, the WWF intends to expand its advanced solutions (mainly UAV) operations, both technologically and geographically.