Here’s a splendid opportunity to contribute to nature conservation. With a little effort, you can become an expert wildlife surveyor.
Originally posted on SAVES Club:
A new project is recruiting citizen scientists to spot wildlife in online images—and help thwart poachers in the process.
(Photo Courtesy of Drone Adventures)
Now you can help save Namibia’s endangered rhinoceroses right from your couch.
Instead of “dialing this toll-free number with your credit card ready,” researchers are asking citizen volunteers to get online and use the Internet for what it was intended for—searching for animal pictures and sharing them.
Called the MicroMappers Wildlife Challenge, the pilot program takes aerial imagery shot by drones to create an online photomap of Namibia’s Kuzikus Wildlife Reserve. Project organizer Patrick Meier hopes he can recruit enough “digital rangers” to scan the photos and identify animals in the reserve to create an accurate census of the area’s wildlife.
That will give park rangers a better handle on the reserve’s wildlife numbers so they can quickly spot poachers.
Who can be a ranger?…
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