How Bristol drones could help save our most endangered species

With funding from Cabot Institute for the Environment , BZS and the EPSRC 's CASCADE grant, a joint team flew to Cameroon in December to trial the use of drones, sensor technologies and deployment techniques to monitor populations of the Critically Endangered Kordofan giraffe at Bénoué National Park. "There has been a significant and drastic decline recently of larger mammals in the park and it is vital that accurate measurements of populations can be established to guide our conservation actions," said Dr Gráinne McCabe, Head of Field Conservation and Science at Bristol Zoological Society. "Bénoué National Park is very difficult to patrol on foot and large parts are virtually inaccessible, presenting a huge challenge for wildlife monitoring. What's more, the giraffe are very well camouflaged and often found in small, transient groups," said Dr Caspian Johnson, Conservation Science Lecturer at Bristol Zoological Society. Keen to identify the best strategy for airborne wildlife monitoring, BSZ approached Dr Matt Watson from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, and Dr Tom Richardson from the University's Aerospace Department and a member of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL). The team were able to draw on successful collaborations using drones to monitor and measure volcanic emissions to begin developing a system for wildlife monitoring. "On the surface this might seem relatively easy but imagine an area the size of greater London - (~1600 square kilometres) - heavily wooded, in which you are trying to find and identify an estimated population of just twenty to thirty Kordofan giraffe," said Dr Watson.