Drones do seem to be big business these days, and it there are rumors that even South Korean conglomerate Samsung themselves are getting into the drone business – the selfie drone business, of course. Well, there are many applications for drone use, including helping out in the conservation efforts that happen worldwide. Drones are useful to help monitor animal species as well as to look out for them nasty poachers, as drones are small and agile enough to venture into areas which are dangerous for humans, or difficult for them to access.
Liverpool John Moores University professor Serge Wich, who was a co-author of a study, shared, “The most commonly used method to survey great ape populations is counting nests during ground surveys as they build a new nest each night but these ground surveys do not occur frequently enough with due time and costs involved. So far, aerial drone surveys have successfully detected nests of orang-utans, but before this study it was unknown if this technology would work for African apes, which often construct their nest lower below the canopy. This study shows that drones are also a promising tool to assist African ape conservation.”
These drones used to assist in locating endangered chimpanzees would be fitted with a standard camera, where they are able to detect nests quickly, not to mention snap a large number of photos in a matter of 20 minutes of flight time. Researchers are then able to come up with maps of the distribution of these nests. Seems to be a win-win situation, right?
Filed in . Read more about Drones. Source: treehugger