The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has approved the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in tiger reserves. The decision has been taken on the basis of six months of successful trials in the use of drones in the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
Plans are afoot to deploy UAVs at the Panna Tiger Reserve in the first phase and based on the results, the use of this technology will be introduced in the other 47 tiger reserves of the country.
According to Dr K Ramesh, UAV Programme Coordinator, Wildlife Institute Of India (WII), the trials were being conducted at Panna since January in association with Conservation Drones, an US-based company. The final results of a number of independent missions carried out by the WII team recently have been satisfactory, he said.
According to sources in NTCA, the country is now in a position to deploy UAVs for wildlife research and management. “We shall be working towards deploying UAVs in selected sites and will continue work on improvisation to make the technological integration robust,” they said.
While deployment and integration of drones would be taken up indigenously, research and development would continue with national and international partners.
Wildlife scientists consider drones to be the future of conservation given that it can have multiple applications. They can be deployed not only for monitoring of tigers and keeping tabs on poachers but also carrying out detailed research as tiger counting and prey base estimation.
“We are also making an effort to use integrated advance technology to monitor tigers in areas where humans cannot reach. Drones can reach hilly, riverine and other difficult terrains and send us pictures. If, for instance, there is a fire or smoke in the forest, we can fly the drones and would get to know what’s exactly happening and where,” said Dr Ramesh.
Drones can also help the forest officials in getting updates from the dense forest areas as they have a receiver system that can penetrate into thick canopy of trees, he added.
The trials in Panna have been done on an assembled drone at a cost of Rs 6 lakh which is being borne by the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature. Two experts from US-based company Conservation Drones, lian Pin Koh and Simon Wunderlin, were associated as demonstrators in the course of trials.
The conservation drones are low-cost UAVs that are capable of autonomous flights for over 30 minutes or more at a stretch, covering a range between 30 km and 50 km.
They can also be equipped with high definition night vision cameras and can relay real time images and videos back to the control room. According to WII scientists, nearly 74,000 acres wilderness track in Kenya are being kept under vigil through drones. It can do the work of 50 rangers, they added.