Stopping poachers and protecting parks and communities

In Africa and Asia, poaching is reaching epidemic proportions and placing iconic mammals at risk of extinction within our lifetimes. While new technologies have emerged to track and analyze contraband from the illegal wildlife trade, there are no affordable technologies that help law enforcement effectively locate poachers before they reach their target animals. To help address this challenge, RESOLVE partnered with Steve Gulick (a conservation technologist) and Intel to develop TrailGuard™ AI, a cryptic anti-poaching camera-based alert system designed to stop poachers before they kill.

TrailGuard AI is used as a security system for national parks to detect, stop, and arrest poachers. The technology also helps improve intelligence on poaching and related illicit networks, helping authorities crack down on illegal wildlife trade. Small enough to conceal along trails, TrailGuard AI’s camera head uses artificial intelligence to detect humans within the images and relays pictures containing humans back to park headquarters via GSM, long-range radio, or satellite networks. The TrailGuard AI technology was field-tested in a reserve in East Africa, where it enabled the arrest of thirty poachers and the seizure of over 1,300 lb. of bushmeat.

To help meet a growing demand for this technology, RESOLVE is developing, implementing, and scaling the technology to make TrailGuard AI as affordable as possible to ensure its widespread use across wildlife reserves that desperately need the technology. TrailGuard AI is just one conservation tool that RESOLVE is developing through WildTech@RESOLVE, an enterprise committed to developing durable, high-technology devices to facilitate the protection and monitoring of wildlife. Other variants include ForestGuard AI to detect logging trucks and prevent illegal logging in protected forests, and WildEyes AI to detect target wildlife species to prevent human-wildlife conflict and enhance wildlife monitoring.