Tech Firm Sigfox Develops Tiny Tracker To Help Fight Rhino Poaching (reuters.com) 46
French tech company Sigfox has developed a bite-size tracker that can be inserted into the horns of rhinos to help conservationists monitor and protect the endangered species. From a report: With the dramatic decline of animal species in the past century mostly due to poaching and urban expansion, wildlife organizations have turned to technology to help safeguard species being pushed towards extinction. The global number of rhinos dwindled to about 20,000 a decade ago due to relentless poaching, though they have rebounded to about 29,000 thanks to conservation efforts. Cameras, infrared and motion sensors, electronic bracelets and drones have been used over the years to protect endangered species, but have at times been limited by vast distances and limited resources in the countries concerned. Sigfox, known for building networks that link objects to the internet, has developed sensors able to give the exact location of rhinos using the firm's network over a longer period of time. [...] The sensors can alert park rangers when rhinos approach an area identified as particularly dangerous due to previous instances of poaching. Combined with other warning sensors, they can be used to get rescue teams to the location in real time.
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Do you mean RINO?
Target the customers (Score:3)
Poison the horn with chemical castration drugs.
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In terms of "solutions" like that i was thinking more on terms of killer drones.
Of course, the poachers will start to use drones on their own and shit will get whizzy.
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Poison the horn
Now there's an idea. If there is a large enough scare about it killing the users then people may actually stop seeking it. However, this doesn't stop poachers from moving onto another animal. A better solution would be to spray certain animals weekly (via drone?) with the malaria virus which is harmless to them but quite harmful and contagious for humans. This would likely wipe out the poachers, the distributors, the end users and everyone around them. If I didn't care about my fellow humans then this
Re: Target the customers (Score:1)
Something lethal to only humans, absorbed through the skin, would be more appropriate than castration. Killing the poachers and consumers would solve the problem outright.
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"with chemical castration drugs.
That won't work as what you describe is something that needs to be taken daily."
The thing is, the horn doesn't work either but people believe it.
Flood the internet with videos showing rhinos with a drug-filled hoodies soaking on their horn for a couple of days and explain that consuming any of it makes you impotent and sterile for years.
Push it on every media in Asia for months.
I bet it would make a dent.
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The thing is, the horn doesn't work either but people believe it.
Your solution is problematic because most end users don't even know they are ingesting ground up rhino horn.
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If it was about boners, Viagra would have saved the Rhino.
It's about conspicuous consumption. They want the horns because they are expensive and will impress their friends.
Fake horns could destroy the market. Build a 3d Rhino horn printer that takes fingernail clippings as feedstock.
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You assume there is significant actual rhino horn in the product currently being sold.
The really rich ones, have cups made out of the horns, which somehow is supposed to make the liquid in the cup effective.
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https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Ask them how successful they are.
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The obvious question to ask: (Score:4, Interesting)
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Given the state of IoT, it's not an unreasonable question to ask. I poked around a bit, and it looks like this company (based in France) at least seems to take security seriously: https://www.wndgroup.io/2017/0... [wndgroup.io]
They use a fundamentally different technology than most IoT products, broadcasting a unique protocol over their own radio networks, and appear to focus on industrial products like water meters rather than consumer devices. Of course anyone can say anything, but it sounds like they're not as likel
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TFA is remarkably free of tech content and specs so only can speculate.
It does say the device only wakes up and broadcasts intermittently so difficult to track by it's transmissions. They should also encrypt the data so location can't be decoded.
They could use something like LoRa which supports long range, low power, low bitrate data transmission and can be set up as a wide area mesh.
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Security doesn't even particularly matter. Triangulating the source of a signal doesn't require being able to understand the signal, so unless these are somehow placed with directional satellite antennas that reliably point upwards, they can be used by poachers to locate rhinos.
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Shhh!
The obvious tactic is to deploy a bunch of these trackers inside of a trap. Surrounded by military and law enforcement. The poachers go in but never come out.
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Additional benefit (Score:2)
The new trackers also help the Rhinos count their steps more accurately than the Fitbits used in the prototype phase.
[ and, poaching [wikipedia.org] a Rhino seems inefficient and dumb vs. broiling ... :-) ]
Another solution (Score:2)
Instead of all the expensive, high tech stuff, might the just allow people to raise and harvest rhinos? When tried in South Africa, the rhino population spiked and the poaching dipped (why take the chance of getting nabbed poaching what has become a commodity item?)
Of course, the "animal protectionist" don't care for that idea, because . . . REASONS?
Alligator farming became a thing in the southern US, providing a valuable source of handbags, shoes and tough, tasteless, chewy meat, and the alligators are be
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I guess the one Mexico is saving money to pay for should do? There's even prior art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Instead of all the expensive, high tech stuff, might the just allow people to raise and harvest rhinos?
Alligator farming became a thing in the southern US,
Now I really like that idea! In some southern US states, feral pigs are a serious problem. Apparently, they can be overly ornery.
A rhino might be able to mix it up with them . . . as in, the rhino says to the feral pig:
"You think you bad, mutha fucka? You think you bad?"
providing a valuable source of handbags, shoes and tough, tasteless, chewy meat, and the alligators are becoming the pests that they once were.
I think that minor detail can be solved when the winter cold kills the gorillas, or something like that.
Better idea (Score:3)
Arrange some safaris for mercenarys. No penalties, take as many poachers as you wish.
Stupid question: (Score:2)
like most low power IoT, probably better with LoRa (Score:2)
It looks like a neat little unit; a few seconds into the video they show a potted device with a sigfox module on one side, another photo [dailysabah.com] shows a GNSS module on the other (with a patch antenna on top, similar to this [quectel.com]), and a Saft LS14250 [saftbatteries.com] LiSOCl2 battery (nominally 4.3 Wh). A GNSS position fix consumes up to ~1 mWh, and a Sigfox transmission should consume less than that, so they should have more than enough energy budget to last the three years comfortably.
Interestingly if they'd used LoRaWAN instead they ma
Variety of sensors (Score:2)
There are a variety of other sensors available and I was thinking about use for server room temperature monitoring (possibly also door opening?), but the network coverage in the USA is only regional.
Warning: Sadistic levels of satire approaching... (Score:1)