Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1172746
26 SMT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2019 common in some places, particularly in remote areas. Another constraint is that there are a lot of places in Africa, in the U.S., and around the world where we can't even use a cellular net- work. Therefore, 95% of what we do uses a long-range radio link (LoRa) to transmit small images over long distances and have a near real-time burglar alarm system. Johnson: That's a good point and a great teaser too (laughs). Let's step back and have you describe what you're doing with the tech- nology, what the application is, and how and where you're using it. Dinerstein: I'll focus on the problem and need for wildlife conservation, which is part of what I do in my field of work, and then I'll dive into the technology. For some background, we're going through the sixth-greatest extinction cri- sis in the history of our planet, and this is the only one that has been caused by humans; humans were not around when the five, big, previous ones hit. How it has manifested is we're losing 200 species a day, according to some experts. Most of the species are going extinct in rainforests, but the ones that receive the most attention, of course, are what we call "the charismatic megafauna," such as ele- phants, rhinos, lions, tigers, and mountain gorillas. It's estimated that one elephant in Africa is poached every 15 minutes. At the current rate, there will be no forest elephants alive in the Congo Basin Forest in 10 years. Also, there are only 1,000 mountain gorillas left in a few parks; there are more lowland gorillas, but those are endangered too. As far as rhinos go, we have five species, but all rhinos face tre- mendous pressure. We first tested TrailGuard at the edge of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania and its extension to the Maasai Mara in Kenya. Right now, you can go online and watch the migra- tion of more than one million wildebeest— and sometimes up to two million—moving in a clockwise direction around this ecosys- tem, following the rains, and it's spectacular. But what most people don't know is that each year, around 140,000 wildebeest are poached there for the industrial bushmeat trade. And that's only talking about wildebeest—not even giraffes, dik-diks, impalas, zebras, cape buffa- loes, and other animals caught in snares, or, in the case of elephants and rhinos, poached with weapons. Johnson: I knew it was a problem, but I had no idea about the numbers. Dinerstein: Right. So, we've introduced this technology that has the capacity to stop poach- ers before they kill; it's the first of its kind. Other technologies work to track poaching events through DNA or isotope analysis, for example, or that can identify based on ivory from where elephants were poached. These technologies succeed in identifying areas that need to be more protected after the fact, but there was nothing out there to stop poachers Humans detected by TrailGuard AI. These are not poachers but rangers posing as poachers during a field test of the technology in Kenya. Faces are hidden for confidentiality.