Greg Carney and Sean Burnett with their GPS-based poacher spotting device. Photo by Adrian Lam.

Sean Burnett and Greg Carney are Canadian economists with a hobby that may save snow leopards in the Altai region of Russia. They’ve invented a poacher-spotting device that employs heat detectors, underground sensors and satellite GPS monitoring to catch illegal hunters. Their Remote Anti-Poaching Intelligence Device uses heat sensor technology attached to a GPS which is triggered by heat of campfires and then sends alert  emails with coordinates to park rangers.

The protected park in the Altai Republic of Russia, has had a sad history of poachers shooting wild sheep and tracking snow leopards. To date the park authorities have had a difficult time catching them.

“If we find that this technology is successful there is no reason it can’t be used in anti-poaching activities all around the world,” said Altai Project director Jennifer Castner. “You have to know your landscape and your targets,” she said.

“A lot of people have a lot of ideas of what can be done [to catch poachers], it’s just a matter of finding amazing people like Greg and Sean who are willing to dedicate so much of their time,” Castner said.

Read more.

Allegations against seven who died and three survivors of illegal wildlife poaching in crashed helicopter.

A court in southern Siberia’s Altai Republic acquitted three high ranking Russian officials of hunting endangered animals when their helicopter crashed killing seven others in January 2009.

The case in the remote town of Koch Agash, has been over two years coming to court but Judge Nikolai Lubenitsky said yesterday the prosecution (which asked for one year jail terms) had failed to prove the defendants’ guilt.

The crash in Altai’s Chernaya mountain killed seven people, including the Russian president’s envoy to the State Duma, Alexander Kosopkin, and a federal environmental official, Viktor Kaymin, the chairman of the department of wildlife protection and management for the Altai Republic.

Trial of three high profile Russian survivors from Altai Russia helicopter crash. Allegations of illegal wildlife killing. Photo Photo Ria Novosti A. Kryeshev.

At the time WWF Russia called for an investigation when photos of the crash site revealed bodies of shot argali (rare and endangered wild sheep) amidst the helicopter ruins along with several hunting rifles. In Russia it has been illegal to hunt Argali since 1934. As well as being protected in their own right, Argali are also the main prey of the few remaining Russian endangered snow leopards living in this region. The future of both species lies in a precarious balance.

VIP poaching is rife in Russia and sadly often officials in law enforcement on the ground are afraid and powerless against wealthy people in official positions.

Three of the four survivors, including former republican Prime Minister Anatoly Bannykh, were charged with illegally hunting the protected animals.

Alexey Vaisman, Chief co-ordinator WWF Russia. “We were not looking for punishment. We want offical recognition from the courts there’s been a deliberate violation of the law from high ranking officials. There’s no point in them pointing fingers at each other, they are equally guiltly regardless of who was shooting and who was not , that’s what the law states.”

Unfortunately this recognition won’t happen now. The best we can hope for is that the huge media coverage given to these outlaw VIPs may help stop others from assuming they are above the law and can kill endangered wildlife for fun.

Read my Diary on Russia’s last remaining snow leopards after my visit to the Altai area in July 2010.

Altai mountains, snow leopard habitat in Russia. Photo by Sibylle

Following up from my trip to the Altai Mountains this July I found out Rodney Jackson from the Snow Leopard Conservancy visited the area in August and trained some local residents from Inegen and staff from the Altaisky Nature Reserve to do snow leopard counts in the Argut River valley. This beautiful part of Russia still has a snow leopard population but little is known about the size of that population or their movement. Rodney trained the team to use the Reconyx RapidFire and HyperFire cameras and they installed seven cameras along the main snow leopard transit routes. This month there’ll be more camera traps purchased with financial assistance of  Panthera and the Altai Assistance Project.

Reconyx camera trap and reader. Photo by Sibylle

WWF Russia is also involving local communities of the Koch Agach region, where our July Altai snow leopard project team went regularly for supplies. I like the idea of local involvement. While research is important it must be done at the same time as education and antipoaching efforts. The approach by WWF is to get local people involved in conservation and rare species monitoring, that is, animals like snow leopards and their prey species the wild argali sheep. Trained teams will remove illegal snares and traps, as well as educate their fellow locals on issues relating to nature conservation.

After much searching one of our Altai snow leopard research team finally found an Altai felt souvenir with snow leopard motif. Photo by Sibylle

While in Altai I searched high and low for souvenir items with snow leopard motifs. In fact it was a task I asked the entire team to help me with, but after 2 weeks of 10 people looking we found only one. Birgit, our eagle eyed Austrian team member found a felt souvenir with a jolly woman selling at the edge of the road one day.

So I’m happy to hear about a recent workshop on felt making organized by Fund of Sustainable Development of Altai (FSDA) with the support of UNDP/GEF Project in Kosh – Agach. Felt making has been less popular in recent times but it could provide a good income for women especially if ecotourism is fostered and people want souvenirs. The felt teachers are not only teaching the craft but also encouraging the women to use snow leopard and argali motifs, thereby educating tourists about local wildlife. I’m hoping next time I go to Altai these lovely items will be everywhere.

BBC News has reported the following story. “Two herdsmen have been sentenced to eight and 10 years in prison for killing a snow leopard in northwest China’s Xinjiang region.
China’s state news agency Xinhua quoted local authorities saying the men had set a trap after wild animals had been preying on their sheep. When a snow leopard was trapped, they stoned it to death and gave its fur, bones and internal organs to others.
The wildlife protection office of Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture confirmed that the animal they killed was a snow leopard, said Yang Jianwei, a publicity official of Manas County Committee of the Communist Party of China, where the men were convicted.
Xinhua reported that five suspects who had allegedly killed two snow leopards were arrested in January this year by the Public Security Bureau of Luntai County, Xinjiang. Four people were sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing and selling four snow leopards on 19 November 2008.”

It’s good to see China enforcing its laws on the illegal killing of snow leopards but it would be so much better if education helped people understand they shouldn’t kill them in the first place. Sadly a no-win for the herdsmen and a no-win for the snow leopards.

Illegal trade in wildlife in Asia is estimated at over $10 billion dollars, second only to weapons and drug smuggling. This is a staggering and potentially depressing story.
But ASEAN nations have recently made major commitments at an ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (WEN) meeting to improve enforcement and also halt habitat depletion. A sad case is that tiger numbers in Asia have gone from over 100,000 to just 4,000 in the last 90 years.

ASEAN WEN member map

WEN was formed in 2005 and is the world’s largest wildlife law enforcement network that involves police, customs and environment agencies of all 10 ASEAN countries – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand.

For a full report on what the WEN meeting agreed to and the work of WEN see here.

Technology has changed just about everything we do in the last 10 years so why not use technology to save endangered animals from poaching? That’s exactly what Steve Gulick, a tech-head and keen conservation biologist supporter has done. He’s developed motion-triggered cameras for biologists studying chimps in the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park (NNNP) of the Republic of Congo. His system uses a network of metal detectors which can read moving metal objects like a machete or a rifle that a poacher may be carrying. It trips a sensor which in turn sends a radio signal to a wireless Internet gateway camouflaged somewhere nearby and then this signal is transmitted via satellite to the internet and a message logged and sent which reveals poachers’ positions. Rangers are then immediately able to go out and confront poachers rather than only learning about their presence from animal carcasses days later. How brilliant is that? It may even be that Trailguard, the name Steve has given it, could be used to identify poaching activities in snow leopard country in the high Altai mountains of central Asia. Here’s hoping.