Elephants are constantly being killed in Africa, rhinoceroses have almost completely disappeared in Vietnam and Mozambique, and the tiger population in the whole world, numbering only three thousand individuals, is on the verge of extinction. Large forests are disappearing in many countries of Southeast Asia and the Pacific region due to illegal logging. Given the scope and scale of the destruction of wildlife species and illegal logging, these crimes have taken on the character of a full-scale production. Helicopters and automatic weapons replace trucks and rifles for poachers. The latest technology is used to commit crimes against forest resources. Illegally harvested timber is transported from region to region with the help of an extensive and deeply rooted network of corrupt officials and bribers.
All these criminal actions are due to one and the same reason – an unbridled passion for profit. Helping to combat these and many other crimes are high-tech sensors and related technologies that enable better, faster and cheaper data collection about nature. This provides an opportunity to constantly monitor the environment on an increased scale of space. The proposed tools (online maps and portals) provide an opportunity to carry out automated data collection with increased geographical coverage. Also, individual representatives of wild fauna represent an economically valuable resource of conditionally free nature. This draws the attention of criminal communities to the mastery of the digital network and the development of illegal trade networks. It has been established that the trade in wild animals poses a threat to national security, leads to the loss of biological diversity, the strengthening of corruption, the improvement of cybercrime technologies, ensures the implementation of other anti-social acts and the deterioration of public health. Strengthening the process of introducing digitization into the life of society introduces the emergence of useful and important services. In particular, the digital transformation of the ecological sphere has an impact on the state of the environment and highlights the issue of protecting the environment in which a person lives.
For open source pattern recognition to identify unique whales, sharks, zebras.
Court cases in South Africa related to rhino poaching (map).