Google Pays for Drones To Bust African Rhino Poachers

Excellent Initiative..

I watched a doco a while back about a bloke named Damien Mander, who was ex-SAS and served in Afghanistan/Iraq, and was now living in South Africa training wardens to protect the elephants and rhinos. He said that the one tool he wished he had access to was predator UAVs like the ones they had in Afghanistan, because the amount of ground it could cover in one flight was huge compared to troops on-foot (or even in ground based vehicles). He had hooked up with a Melbourne based aviation engineer to design a UAV themselves, with thermo imaging equipment etc. The problem for me was that it was essentially a radio controlled plane, complete with the buzzing sound of the little nitro engine. Seemed like an easy target for a poacher to just shoot it out of the sky.

I really hope Google are putting a predator style UAV in this guys hands.

This is a cool initiative, but when happens after the poachers are "exposed"?

Found his site, and this link is interesting

http://www.iapf.org/en/2012-08-10-10-37-18/rhinouav