Previously, Thanda Safari employed various methods including foot collars and horn pods to monitor their black and white rhino populations. However, limitations with these approaches, such as the use of telemetry units requiring line-of-sight, with no direct data recording capabilities or GPS functionality, necessitated a more sophisticated solution.
The newly developed Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled collars continuously observe, analyse, and learn to identify behaviour patterns specific to each rhino. When registering ‘abnormal’ activity related to a possible poaching attempt, fighting, mating, giving birth or illness, the collar triggers an instant alert on ranger’s phones, pinpointing the incident’s precise location via GPS.
Source: Getaway