{{Ol Pejeta Wildlife Sanctuary has received legal approval to launch a multi million drone to fight poaching in the 90,000-acre facility.}}<\/p>\n
The sanctuary\u2019s spokesperson Ms Elodie Sampere said the ‘Aerial ranger\u2019 will officially be launched in June.<\/p>\n
This will be the first time modern technology is used to fight poaching in Kenya.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been quite a journey to get to this point and has taken the leading experts in drone technology-Airware Incorporated, countless development hours. The aerial ranger\u2019s software and hardware were developed from scratch. <\/p>\n
Tests were conducted and we are upbeat, we now have the right drone strong enough to withstand challenging operating conditions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ol Pejeta recently celebrated the birth of its 100th rhino calf since it was established and hosts one of the largest herds within East Africa.<\/p>\n
The sanctuary was also voted the best managed wildlife conservancy in the world in 2013.<\/p>\n
Ms Sampere said the drone, once launched, would also reduce costs of conducting wildlife census across its vast land.<\/p>\n
She said they used to hire a light aircraft at Sh18,920 per hour for 13 hours, with the data collected being subjected to a large degree of human error as counting has to be done in real time and with wide transects.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut an Aerial Ranger could do all this in a day, at minimal cost, recording footage that can be watched several times over and carefully analysed. Censuses could be conducted monthly, providing experts with valuable and more reliable data about the Laikipia ecosystem.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will simply click a spot on a ‘Google Earth\u2019 style map, and select the ‘fly here\u2019 or ‘point camera here\u2019 option. In the same menu is a ‘return home\u2019 button, which, when clicked, will send the drone back to its launch point without any further instruction. <\/p>\n
When it has reached its landing spot, it deploys its parachute and floats elegantly to the ground. The beautiful simplicity of the operating system, coupled with sophisticated mission capabilities, was a high priority,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
NMG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Ol Pejeta Wildlife Sanctuary has received legal approval to launch a multi million drone to fight poaching in the 90,000-acre facility.}} The sanctuary\u2019s spokesperson Ms Elodie Sampere said the ‘Aerial ranger\u2019 will officially be launched in June. This will be the first time modern technology is used to fight poaching in Kenya. \u201cIt has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000051688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-13917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000051688,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13917.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13917.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13917.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13917.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13917.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13917.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000051688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13917"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=13917"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=13917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}