"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
--Albert Einstein
In their efforts to create an 'elixer of immortality', Taoists of ancient China unwittingly created it's antithesis -- a mixture of sulfur, realgar, saltpeter and honey -- a concoction known today as gunpowder. Innocently enough, the powder was used for entertainment purposes -- creating fireworks to dazzle and amaze.
Unfortunately, it didn't take long for some clever killer to realize the destructive potential of the new substance, making it's debut as the first weapon of mass destruction in 904 AD.
About 100 years ago, Albert Einstein discovered e=mc2 -- a discovery of unimaginable scope, importance, and meaning that would eventually be used as a platform for the most destructive devices ever created by humankind.
Two Months ago, news of a would-be invisibility cloak hit the global news cycle. And as with China's elixir of immortality, the viable future of this technology quickly found itself drifting into the world of war. Officials and nonofficials alike -- skirting past any serious thought at potential personal and commercial uses for such technology -- feverishly and deeply explored the vast possibilities the cloaks use for improved military effectiveness. Once again, a dream-like technology was morphed to a nightmare reality.
Of course these examples are but grains of sand on the infinite beach of technology. Unfortunately, many of the most high-profile grains have found their footing not in promoting life and protecting the Earth, but rather in seeking their destruction.
So when we finally come across something -- anything -- that works in favor of life, well... it's worth taking a pause to see what's up.
So imagine this... and I warn you, the setup is quite sickening. Nevertheless, it's necessary to show just how valuable this piece of military technology is at helping us preserve life -- you know, the kind that isn't waging war.
First the setup:
By the time Steve Gulick arrived, it was too late. The poachers had struck, and elephant carcasses carpeted the floor. "You could step from body to body without your feet touching the ground," he says. "Whole elephant families lay next to each other, gunned down for their tusks."
The massacre had taken place in the Mouadje Bai rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), at a spot well known among local poachers for the rich haul of ivory it can yield. Since 1994 Gulick has been helping the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC) to patrol the area in an effort to thwart these illegal hunters. It has been an unequal contest. Poachers target elephants under the cover of dense rainforest to avoid being detected from aircraft, and patrols like Gulick's have to trek through the forest on foot. Killings can go undetected for months or even years, and during one sweep, Gulick's patrol found more than 200 elephant carcasses in various stages of decomposition.
Unfortunately, this has gone on far too long. Fortunately, someone is finally doing something about it -- something that can actually address the problem before the poachers have time to devastate.
Now he and others are fighting back, using adapted military technology to listen in on elephants and monitor their behavior. They are also borrowing data from environment monitoring satellites to spot illegal logging that can devastate the animals' habitats. Elsewhere, similar techniques are being applied to warn when other endangered species and habitats are being illegally plundered.
To help achieve that Gulick has set up Wildland Security, a company based in New York City that specializes in sensors to detect wildlife crime. One of its products, a small seismic detector called TrailGuard, can be buried along forest pathways to pick up the footfalls of people as they pass. "It's based on military technology used to detect enemy troop movements," he says. To distinguish hunters from harmless passers-by, the devices also contain magnetometers that can detect iron in guns several meters away. Once triggered, the TrailGuards transmit a radio signal to an antenna at the top of the forest canopy, which relays it to a hub to be sent to forest rangers over a satellite phone link. "You can tell the number of people in the party and the direction they are walking, so you can come prepared, before the killing starts," Gulick claims.
Of course, with any new idea, there has to be a period of testing before a full roll out. So the near future will see these devices in modest numbers.
The devices are about to be installed in a national park in the DRC as part of a pilot study being funded by the WSC. Ten TrailGuards will be laid out along the park boundary on major access trails used by poachers. "They are going to allow us to remotely monitor some of our most threatened areas," says Steve Blake of the WSC's centre in Libreville, capital of nearby Gabon. TrailGuards are also being deployed in the Osa Peninsula on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, where poaching is threatening to wipe out the region's jaguars and peccaries, and in the hard-to-reach Altai Republic in southern Russia, where poachers arrive by helicopter each winter to illegally hunt snow leopards for their coats.
Snow leopards for Chrissake! Can you imagine killing a snow leopard? Clearly, abject poverty is at least partially to blame -- not only for poaching, but for most illegal deforestation and general environmental exploitation as well. Of course that (as well as legal environmental exploitation and destruction) is fodder for another series of posts. For now, I just have to shake my head at the depths to which humanity is capable of falling.
Anyway, here's one other way sleaze-ball poachers are being tracked and hopefully stopped. This one has to do with a set of acoustic sensors designed to monitor elephants communicating with each other in Kakum National Park, Ghana. The sensors triangulate the trumpeting of the elephants in order to pinpoint their location. In addition, the sensors are able to pick up the sound of gunshots. So engineers are currently "developing software that will automatically notify rangers as soon as shots are heard."
So there is hope, but targeting poachers alone will not eliminate poaching. For that, you have to address the root cause of poaching -- poverty and greed -- and that is going to take a lot more than some acoustic sensors or adapted military technology. But again -- fodder for future posts.