Two drones will be employed to protect the wolves and the biodiversity

The campaign fund “SOS Natura d’Italia” launched by WWF Italia in 2017 to protect the wolves, collected € 63,000.30. It is the wolf, one of the species that are symbol of biodiversity in Italy, that is now endangered due to illegal hunting, car accidents and the continuous demands to legalize wolf killing.

Thanks to the funding of many supporters, the money collected were used to reduce poaching and accidental deaths (€36,000), to prevent damages caused by sheepdogs (€17,000.30) and to improve the man-wolf relationship (€10,000).

Of the €36,000 used to purchase the equipment for the reduction of poaching and accidental deaths, €10,000 (of which €7m500 for the equipment, €2,000 for training activities and €500 for the surveys and the monitoring) were spent to provide the WWF volunteers with two drones, which were delivered  in the past few days.

The equipment will allow the WWF guards to monitor large and inaccessible areas, so to be able to detect illegal acts, suspicious cars and poachers directly through the images recorded by the drones. With thermal imaging cameras, WWF guards will also be able to do night-time monitoring: it is indeed at night that poachers and criminals act against nature.

 

Already used in Africa for elephants and rhinoceroses, drones make a great contribution to the preservation of biodiversity. With this donation, guards will be enabled to act throughout the country, both in areas of stable presence of the species and in areas of recent recolonization.