Poaching

Cake has gotten more serious about stopping African poachers. It has followed up its Kalk AP electric bush bike with an even more versatile, stealthy ebike, the Ösa AP. The new bike is part workbench, part cargo hauler and part off-grid power supply.

Back in January, Sweden's Cake joined with the Southern African Wildlife College and Goal Zero to develop a special electric motorcycle to aid anti-poaching measures in the African bush. Now the bikes have been delivered and are in use by rangers.

Swedish electric motorcycle company Cake has launched the Kalk AP, a special edition developed to help rangers protect wildlife in the African bush. The motos are also supplied with Goal Zero solar kits to keep the battery topped up in the wild.

A new student-led research program has been launched at the UK's University of Southampton with the aim of finding ways to improve the efficiency and extend the battery life of unmanned aviation vehicles used to monitor remote locations.

In an effort to combat poaching, drone technology has been paired with software and techniques used by astronomers in a system designed to automatically detect and monitor wildlife in hard to reach areas, even at night when most poaching occurs.

​Many wild elephants already wear GPS-equipped collars, which let wildlife officials track their whereabouts. An upgrade to those collars, however, could soon allow those officials to instantly know when poachers are shooting at the elephants.