Technologies to Protect Wolves Instead of Extermination: What Are They?

I mentioned earlier that recently Sberbank signed a memorandum to develop a digital system for recognizing the Amur tiger. Together with the Amur Tiger Center and the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), Sberbank is developing and refining an existing innovative system for recording and tracking Amur tigers. Sberbank also plans to develop a unified system for data storage and processing. An AI-based, neural network-powered system for recognizing Amur tigers will be developed.

Previously, I proposed stopping the extermination of wolves and tackling problems with them through tracking and monitoring packs! Timely addressing any conflict situations with humans.

If technologies are created, let's use them to protect wildlife and restore animal populations! For the benefit of our homeland. Instead of senselessly shooting animals and granting large rewards for killing wolves under the guise of their danger.

Now, let's talk about what's being implemented globally. Recently, experts successfully tested the operation of new smart cameras for tracking wild animals using artificial intelligence (algorithms). The cameras are called TrailGuard. The technology of these cameras was initially developed to track poachers. But now these cameras are being deployed to warn villagers about the presence of predators!

Scientists conducted large-scale exercises using these cameras in India during the monsoon season of 2022. The cameras' AI instantly detects tigers and immediately transmits all necessary information to the mobile phones and computers of specialists, who take measures to prevent conflict situations between humans and predators when necessary.

Currently, researchers are ready to integrate these cameras more widely, and efforts are being made to implement technology to protect wild animals that humans unjustly kill just for coming out of the forest to populated areas.

In essence, it is all very simple. TrailGuard AI camera-alert system cameras are connected to a unified server with advanced AI algorithms for detecting both poachers and animals. The cameras instantly analyze the wilderness in real-time, gather information about surrounding objects, and can accurately identify the necessary animal species or poachers when needed. Within just 30 seconds, authorized bodies receive data with precise coordinates and can even get an approximate route of the poachers’ movement.

This technology currently allows controlling tigers and other predators, detecting poaching, and providing early warnings of human-wildlife conflicts.

Meanwhile, our DOMESTIC specialists are right now developing and integrating similar technologies. While we successfully use satellite monitoring and GPS in practice to protect animals, we hear hysterical laughter from many officials heading regional ecological departments! They mock us for calling not to exterminate wolves but to use modern technologies to solve conflict situations.

This is the DEGRADATION OF THE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, which I constantly talk about. Imagine you are flying on a plane whose pilot has no idea how to operate it. Would you be scared to fly with such a pilot? Yes. You would be scared for yourself and all the passengers because it is not hard to imagine what happens next.

We see something analogous in the management system. While our plane is flying, the person calling himself a pilot is sitting and calculating how much money he can make if he disassembles the plane and sells it for parts.

What exactly was I talking about a year ago when I called for the implementation of modern technologies to protect predators? As you know, the authorities declare that wolves attack livestock, interfere with people's lives. Therefore, they need to be killed! And they are killed, provoking even greater exits of wolves from the taiga.

Wolves are pack animals. They hunt in packs! If part of the pack is killed, the wolves cannot function normally and procure food. Hunters often kill the entire pack, leaving 2-3 wolves. They start to scavenge, but in the end, they always come to people and try to find food near settlements.

Take Kamchatka, for example. A couple of years ago, it was announced that 179 wolves lived in the region, and the authorities issued 179 quotas for their killing! Is this a 'license for ecocide'? Definitely. Moreover, this year, the authorities increased the rewards for each killed wolf to 40,000 rubles. Kill 10 wolves - get 400,000 rubles!

We are told, 'anyway, we can't kill them all,' so if you issue quotas to kill the entire population, does that mean you ACKNOWLEDGE that it is possible? I understand that hunters may not use all quotas. But you ALLOW this and give such an opportunity.

Last year, the Kamchatka authorities completely removed any limits on wolf hunting. Each hunter can kill as many wolves as they want in a day or the entire hunting season! Limits are not set.

So the only reason for exterminating wolves, according to the same authorities, is the predators leaving the taiga and attacking grazing animals. Therefore, I proposed: instead of paying crazy rewards for exterminating wolves, organizing safaris, and clearing the Russian Taiga of the wild's health keepers, it is necessary to use modern technologies.

Conflicts between humans and predators typically take several forms, including livestock killings, rare attacks on people, and retaliatory killings of predators by enraged locals. People destroy predators' habitats, deprive them of food, provoke them to come to people! Then they complain that predators tried to procure food from humans and increase the number of killings.

With existing technologies that allow controlling animal exits from the wild and preventing any conflict situations in time, we continue the total extermination of wolves. And, as you can see, the heads of departments have no idea that such technologies even exist!

Today, satellite remote sensing, machine learning, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are successfully implemented. And, more modern technologies using artificial intelligence are being developed! Including already developed and successfully tested technologies such as TrailGuard cameras.

So why are predators still being exterminated? It's all about no one wanting to change anything! After all, killing those same wolves means big money from organizing 'safaris,' it's an artificially created enemy, which means organizing various events with taxpayer budget money to eliminate the 'enemy.' Hunting takes on a noble hue because it's not just for fun shooting at animals but saving people from vicious monsters! Right?

Implementing technologies to resolve conflicts between wildlife and humans requires spending money. But for 'fighting the enemy,' money can be uncontrollably written off from the budget, literally throwing packs of bills into a black abyss where it all dissolves throughout the entire vertical of power.

© PAVEL PASHKOV