Checkpoints are used throughout the world to try to stem the flood of animals parts:   ivory, horns, skins, bushmeat, and other contraband contributing to the muli-billion dollar bussiness in animal parts and the decimation of wildlife. Checkpoints may be at border crossings - on logging roads - or any conduits used for smuggling. They often are only a simple pole gate across a road, manned by a single inspector in an adjacent shack.       The value of the contraband being smuggled often greatly exceed the inspector's salary.  The inspector is continually...


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It is often sugested that "all" that needs to be done to solve elephant and other poaching problems  is to reduce the demand. There is one problem there - or rather 7 billion problems. For example, in China if you somehow managed to convince 99.9% of the population not to buy ivory - an impossible task, but just say you could - that 0.1% that remained unconvinced represents 1.3 million people still wanting to buy ivory.   Using persuasion to change people's views on the consumptive use of wildlife is important. You can shift the mean of the distribution of human behavior in a favorable...


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If rangers out on a routine patrol encounter a gang of poachers, it is quite likely the poachers will be better armed than the rangers. However, if the rangers are part of a rapid response team sent out as a result of a pictures sent be a TrailGuard camera, they will know exactly what to expect and can prepare accordingly - "forewarned is forearmed". The rangers now will have the upper hand, going on the offensive against the poachers who have no idea they have been detected and that a patrol has been sent out to engage them.   In today's battle against poachers it is not just battles...


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  The success that anti-snaring teams have is a demonstration of one of the key ideas behind TrailGuard. Namely, that the trails used by poachers are well-known. All the snares pictured above were picked put by rangers who walked along the exact same trails as did the poachers who placed the snares.  Only the rangers walked the trails long after the poachers. And long enough after that in many cases and animal could already have been snared. If  instead TrailGuards had been set out beforehand - as traps for poachers - every poacher who set those snares on those  trails would himself...


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Tiger researchers had placed a standard wildlife camera trap for a routine population study of tigers in India. This is one non-tiger species the camera trap captured.... report  from "The Telegraph" Calcutta, India, Jan 14, 2011 This poacher was responsible for the death of a rhino When the researches recovered the flash card from the camera trap it was determined from the date of the image that this image had been taken days before the rhino was killed. Had the camera trap been able to transmit the image immediately to rangers when the poacher passed, the poacher might have...


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    Tracking dogs have been used effectively in helping rangers home in on poachers. Unfortunately, the trail usually starts with the discovery of a dead animal. And then the dogs are brought in to acquire the sent and the search begins to find the person who committed the crime. That is too late for the animal. And we will be fighting a loosing war against poaching if we only react after the crime has been committed. Anti-poaching needs to to pre-emptive rather than reactive. We need to discover that a poacher has entered an area with the intent to kill and apprehend...


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  Preemptive Anti-Poaching Technology Catching the poacher before he kills Technology, as a tool, is an incredibly powerful lever. It is what has enabled one ape - us - to reach a population of 7 billion, astronomically exceeding all of our cousin apes and thus becoming the greatest threat to their - and our - continuance on this planet.   One might wish that the evolution of our technological abilities had stopped at our cousin's termite-fishing and nut-cracking level. But it is too late. The genie has been uncorked. We need to find ways of harnessing the power technology...


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