Over time, drones have been slowly changing our lives for the better or worse in ways we would have never imagined. As of now, drones are essentially so low cost (just around $2,500 per drone) and easily kept running with just a few electric batteries, that it has heightened its use tremendously among the public. Drones are everywhere these days from using them to document the aftermath of disasters without being on site to Amazon’s future plan to use them for small packaged deliveries (Kennedy, 2015).

 

I believe that drones have the potential to help protect and save the animal kingdom. Even the most basic of drones have already made such a significant contribution to protecting wildlife seeing that it is able to monitor the poaching sites from a suitable distance and to predict when illegal killing might take place. To tackle the alarming drop in numbers of the African elephants caused by poaching, an organization called Air Shepherd launched the Lindbergh Foundation project that raised over $300,000 in a campaign which was then invested into purchasing drones (Kaye, 2016).  Although drones are important in assisting conservationist’s in their efforts, it cannot stand alone in the fight against poachers. There is simply no purpose in sending data on poachers if the team or rangers cannot arrive in time, hence defeating the purpose of such practice. This could be something to think about as well.  

 

However, at a point of time, drones were out of hand which led a first initiative taken by the Dutch National Police (DNP) that use raptors (bald eagles), specifically trained to take down that certain percentage of the so-called “bad” airborne drones (Weisberger, 2016). Just setting aside the eagles for a moment, it is very unfair and sad to see how human kind would use and force any animal possible into doing services for human kind. While human beings are constantly caught up in our selfish ways, animals become mere assistants to us to solve problems that we create.

 

All the information posed here is relevant to my readers because it falls back to the main basis of animal conservation which is then supported by interesting information that many would not necessarily read about on a daily basis. As my readers would be animal lovers just as I am, they would definitely have no trouble finding a connection with the effort being put into conserving and protecting the rights of animals.