Can Drones Save the Elephants?

This week, 89 African elephants in southern Chad were slaughtered for their ivory tusks, the worst such incident since the killing of 300 elephants a year ago in Cameroon.

To stop the massacre of these stately beasts, conservation groups are fighting poachers with eye-in-the-sky drones. These unmanned aerial vehicles — introduced with the help of local researchers and Western firms such as Google — are giving park rangers new tools in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade of not only ivory from elephants and rhinos but also hides from tigers and other big cats.