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Drones are more commonly thought of as a military weapon or surveillance tool, but they have many more uses. They can even be a solution for many environmental issues.
There's a myriad of drones and ideas being released that prove this, they are called eco-drones or conservation drones.
These eco-drones can act as surveillance to catch illegal loggers and expose environmentally unfriendly farms. They can also be real-time monitoring mechanisms for disaster events, broadcasting messages and collecting meteorological data.
Drones have the ability to fly at lower altitudes and collect more precise information than manned aircraft or satellites. This also means they are advantageous in tropical areas where clouds can often block an image.
Here's some ways drones have helped environmental causes so far...
1. To catch illegal loggers
A university graduate student from Wake Forest University designed $5000 wing drones for the Amazon Basin Conservation Association in Peru. They fly around catching illegal deforestation as it happens. At the moment, the ABCA only have five rangers to monitor the 145,000 hectare Los Amigos conservation area, and illegal gold mining and logging activities have turned most of the lush rainforest to dust.
Max Messinger, the designer, created the drones to assist them in their fight against illegal loggers and miners. They have sophisticated autopilot functions and look more like plastic foam replicas of the Stealth Bomber. Each drone has a fitted Canon camera and can fly up to 10 miles (16km) to a specific location.
2. To expose the unethical and unsustainable operations of pig farms and farms alike
This drone flew over a pig farm and exposed the horrific and disgusting ongoings of the farm. Drone owner, filmmaker Mark Devries, wanted to see what really goes on in these farms. There are over 2,000 farms like this in North Carolina alone.
The drone flew over what looked like a red lake, turns out... It's an open sewage lagoon filled with pig feces and urine.
The pigs waste fall through slats in the floor and get flushed into the "lake" then operators clean the cesspool out by spraying the waste into the air. Which is taken by the wind to neighbouring houses and towns . It's horrible. Check out the video to find out more.
3. Drones used to catch poachers!
A conservation authority in South Africa has taken to the skies to catch illegal poachers. These drones are planned to use infrared cameras and other advanced tracking technology to seek out poachers and alert park rangers to their location. Air Shepherds have flown in one area where as many as 19 rhinos were killed each month, there have been no deaths there for six months.
According to the Guardian, Kenya is to deploy drones in all of its 52 national parks and reserves in a bid to monitor and stop the poaching of elephants and rhinos.
[Image Credit: Steve Bloom/Alamy ]
Here's a great table of all the ways eco-drones can benefit the environment, and there's probably more!
Table via UNEP.
[Header Image: robertmandel]
Read this next: Drones could plant enough trees to save our planet
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