Dear Sophie,

I would like to comment directly on your post regarding your assessment and report about rhino tracking devices in wildlife conservation. I believe it is good to share thoughts and ideas on the WILDLabs forum about these topics, but people should be very careful when they are making bold statement with regards to performance of technology. Some elements in your reporting are highly speculative and lack detailed input from the actual users in the conservation field.

We find this quite concerning as you are not only misinforming people on the WILDlabs-forum, but you might also be providing your own administration (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs)with incorrect information.

With regards to the LoRaWAN based rhino trackers we like to set the following straight and we also raise some questions.

General

• Did you have contact and feedback from people that actually have a personal experience in LoRaWAN based tracking devices for rhino in the field? As far as I know, the people you report about, do not have this experience. I recommend you to look for people in the field that do have this experience, such as park managers of African Parks and Peace Parks.

2.1) Satellite enabled trackers.

• “Africa Wildlife Tracking are the most mature and reliable tracking solution”; How do you know this and what is your source? What numbers did you use to come to this conclusion?
• Why do you name “Argos” CLS as a rhino tracking solution?
• Telerax: “Cited by the community as reliable”; What are your sources here?
• Ear tracking: Who is reporting that ear tag tracking is not an option? This is not a given, so please state your sources so we can verify this.

I realize your attempt is a light-weight update for DEFRA and not an in-depth investigative article, but this level of light-weight leans a bit more to very light-weight if the sources are not named. Or if the sources have vested interests. It’s unlikely that you’ll go into detail with regards to the sources but I find the stated information very superficial to be honest.

2.2) IoT Fixed Infrastructure Tags;

• About your general comment on the “IoT Fixed Infrastructure Tags” – Why do you state that the costs for the infrastructure are “costing several £100,000s” – again, who/what is your source and how is this calculated?
• “Leading solutions in this IoT space seem to be SMART Parks and Sigfox” – again, who is your source and what makes you think Smart Parks is leading? The same goes for Sigfox. For Sigfox I even think you need to identify the solution and not the technology, since Sigfox is “only” a network technology compared to LoRaWAN and is not a end-to-end solution.
• Why are you including links to the websites of the satellite solutions and not to the Smart Parks solutions, even when this is as simple as www.smartparks.org.
• Why are you reporting on the failure of Smart Parks rhino tags “however, there have been recent challenges with their newly miniaturized version, where 5 out of 6 units failed after a short time in Malawi. This could be an anomaly, as their previous versions worked well and we welcome further updates.”?; Who is your source and what did you do to verify this?
• Sigfox: “We have heard some dissatisfaction with customer service and the capability to integrate data with other software and hardware solutions.” Again, who is your source and what makes you say this? Also, why are you speaking of “We”, as I understand this was a personal blogpost?
• Cisco: What makes you say that Cisco “provided IoT trackers” and what is your source?

3) What are the emerging solutions?

• Can you explain why CubeSats are the way to make rhino tracking devices smaller, cheaper and more secure? As you indicate: “Where there is great potential to bring smaller, cheaper, secure satellite tracking to solve these problems”.
• What makes you conclude like this: “Whoever provides cheap tags, small transmitters, multiple gateways with super low costs data will win for wildlife conservation in this exciting new space.” What are your sources and what is the reasoning behind this? (deze zou ik niet doen)

I think a lot of your statements are debatable and not very well substantiated. I’m willing to go as far as to say that they are more damaging than providing solid information to the Wildlab-community and abroad. The community working on trying to find and build better solutions needs reliable information as this is already a very complex problem. Therefore, I would like to suggest that you improve the blogpost where possible with thorough and reliable information. I’m happy to assist you in finding the right information.

To get you started, I would like to offer you some key facts about what Smart Parks has been doing to make a rhino tracking solution:

• In 2017 we have successfully deployed a LoRaWAN rhino horn implant into an Eastern Black rhino in Mkomazi National Park in Tanzania, and the device has giving location update for 2 years without any major issues. The sensor even continued working after it had grown out of the horn. This is a clear proof that a LoRaWAN Geoloc based solutions is perfectly fine for rhino tracking in situations where a LoRaWAN Geoloc network is possible. We have replicated these result in other parks in Africa. Please check our website and other sources for proof: https://www.smartparks.org/news/first-black-rhinos-protected-sensor-implants-horns/
• In 2019 we have successfully deployed a LoRaWAN rhino horn implant into Eastern Black rhino in Liwonde National Park in Malawi. This new sensor does not use LoRaWAN Geoloc to update it’s position, but relies on GNSS (GPS). This allows for rhino tracking based on LoRaWAN in networks and areas that can not or do not want to use the Geoloc function. GNSS can offer higher location accuracy then the Geoloc method. Yes, we have had some issues while deploying prototypes into the field, but this is normal for these type of solutions. We now have a stable sensor in production that is working properly in multiple locations in Africa. Please also look around for proof and maybe start here: https://www.smartparks.org/news/holy-grail-in-rhino-monitoring-deployed-in-liwonde-national-park/
• An important note I would like to add and something I believe is missing from your comments in general, is fact that we have started the OpenCollar Initiative, under which we have made the rhino LoRaWAN + GPS tracker completely open-source. https://opencollar.io/
• Also, you are talking about rhino tracking solutions, however you only discuss the actual tracking devices in your blog post. Please also look at the Application level (what happens to the data) of these solutions, since there are also very important in the total solution.

I’m also happy to put you in touch with park managers who are actually working with the sensors on a day-to-day basis.

Hello Laura,

Thanks for the detailed response. It sounds like a very interesting use of drone technology.

Many thanks,

Mark

Thanks for asking Harold, 

We work with any off the shelf VHF tag, you can use tags already in the field or you can order tags from any of the manufactureres, just have to be VHF of in the case of satelite or GPS tags have a VHF componment.

The drone is piloted manually, you can see the tag locations on the base station in real time you can reposition the drone to avoid terrain challanges to get the best results.

We cover a lot of ground, I can do the math, flight patterns really come down to the application you are looking at animal being tracked ect, happy to discuss specifics further at you convenience.

We have videos of our work on out youtube channel 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj1pcEJHkEPCy94AlT0U7HQ

The oringinal research papers are on researchgate     

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Debbie_Saunders

You can book a virtual demo with me, I'd love to hear about your work and ideas.  It would be great to give you a run through of the solution, flight patterns and user interface.

https://www.wildlifedrones.net/book-demo/

Robert

Wildlifedrones

robert@wildlifedrones.net

+61 491 625 411