STATES CHRONICLE – Ever since mankind has surpassed the limit of survival and started making efforts in order to be comfortable, we’ve gotten used to excess. So it should come as no surprise that a great many species of animals that were doing just fine until we came along are now endangered or worse.
And even though some practices were banned so that these animals can have a chance to get their numbers back under control and hopefully not go extinct as soon we’re not looking, some people don’t really care about that. Instead, for them money is all that matters; well, money and the experience of murdering a rare animal.
I’m talking, of course, about poachers. And despite the fact that wildlife conservationists and multiple scientific groups are doing their best to protect these species, they don’t seem to be having much luck in their endeavors. But they might have just found a new, reliable solution to prevent these unlawful animal killings.
According to a new study from the University of Southern California, poachers may soon be stopped thanks to artificial intelligence. This will come in the form of simulation programs which make use of data from previous encounters and animal distribution to figure out where poachers will strike next.
But it’s so much more than just that. Generally, ranger patrols in parks are quite poorly planned, mostly reactive than proactive. So, this artificial intelligence is meant to help rangers get organized better and showing when and where to patrol in order to stop the most animal killings.
The AI program was dubbed by the team working on it as the Protection Assistant for Wildlife Sanctuary, or PAWS. Ever since 2013, the team has been testing its efficiency in different wildlife reservations in Malaysia and Uganda. These two countries are in particular need of assistance because of the incessant killings of elephants for their still very expensive ivory.
PAWS not only assigns guards to patrol routes designed to check up on the most endangered areas, but it also makes these routes randomized, so that the poachers can’t expect them. The program also learns from experience, based on either successful or failed attempts at stopping the bloody practice.
While this isn’t by any means the first attempt to use an artificial intelligence to attempt to stop poaching, the people behind it hope that it’s going to prove to be more effective than the robot animals and the conservation spy drone used before to detect and stop the illegal hunters.
Image source: Wikimedia