The Challenge Blog features content and discussions on wildlife trafficking trends and topics and how technology can be used to help stem the crisis. We welcome you to read, share, and comment on the latest commentaries from the Challenge Team, as well as leaders in technology and wildlife conservation.
Thank you to the Challenge Prize Winners for their outstanding work!
6 November 2017
What a privilege it has been to work with the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Winners! Their dedication to fighting wildlife trafficking, along with their progress in developing and implementing their innovations have been exceptionally inspiring.
The Challenge, a USAID initiative designed and implemented by Integra and partners, in partnership with the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian, and TRAFFIC, and supported by numerous individuals and groups, attracted three hundred applications from 52 countries. Eighty-six percent of applicants were new to USAID, and almost 50 percent of applicants were new to wildlife trafficking! Sixteen winners were awarded $10,000, technical assistance, networking events and partnership opportunities, and a chance to compete for Grand and Acceleration Prizes totaling over $1,200,000. Another great statistic: three fourth of the Challenge Winners have women in the lead!
We are proud of our Prize Winners, Grand Prize Winners, and Acceleration Prize Winners alike. The amount of progress made by this group in combatting wildlife trafficking is impressive (as you can see through the Spotlight blog/video series below!). A final report on the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge will also be available in the near future.
Thank you to the Challenge Prize Winners for their outstanding work. Thank you to the Challenge supporters for taking the time to learn about and help promote, and for sharing resources and collaborating with the Challenge Winners. The Challenge and its Prize Winners leveraged $2,963,500 to boost the winning innovations! It takes a network to defeat the wildlife trafficking network. It is inspiring to know that the relationships and partnerships built during the Challenge to this effect will carry on in the service of our common mission. A special thank you to the Challenge flagship partners, National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and TRAFFIC, who have supported the Challenge and its Prize Winners throughout
The Challenge is coming to an end, but it remains possible to interact with its winners via social media and Wildlabs.net.
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Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Acceleration Prize Winners Announced
28 September 2017
Since its launch in 2014, the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge has played a pivotal role in harnessing the power of science and technology to combat the international crisis of wildlife trafficking. USAID, in partnership with the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and TRAFFIC, has helped 16 winning innovators, chosen from a pool of over 300 applicants, to develop their solutions to fight wildlife crime. Four of these winners were awarded “grand prizes” in 2016 to support their work to grow and refine tools to fight corruption, identify poaching hotspots, and detect illegal sales online and illegal shipments in ports.
This year, to spur continued progress in advancing these promising solutions, USAID offered a new opportunity for Challenge Prize Winners to compete to win three Acceleration Prizes, worth a total of $100,000 each. These prizes utilized a pay-for-results approach to incentivize continued action and reward those who demonstrated the greatest growth in their solution. The winners were selected based on evidence of their progress in refining their solution, leveraging resources, and building partnerships over the last year and a half.
USAID is pleased to announce the three winners of the Acceleration Prizes, worth $100,000 each. While all of the Challenge Prize Winners have made great advances, these three organizations have made truly remarkable progress in turning promising ideas into viable solutions positioned for scale and impact on the ground:
- The University of Washington created a solution to genetically track the illegal pangolin trade and alert law enforcement to the most heavily poached pangolin populations. Once only a concept, it is now nearly ready to be used in forensic labs worldwide. The solution includes a fully developed genetic system and flexible computer software, and can be easily transferred.
- The Zoological Society of London has developed a new version of their Instant Detect system, a wildlife and threat monitoring network for the most demanding environments. The system uses remote sensors and satellite technology to help authorities identify illegal activity in protected areas in near real-time. The new system will be easier to use, easy to deploy, compatible with existing law enforcement tools, and cheaper to purchase.
- Paso Pacifico started with an idea for an artificial sea turtle egg that contains covert tracking devices to reveal illegal trafficking routes. They now have a functional and scalable prototype that is the result of testing and refinement of various artificial egg designs, materials, and production processes, as well as internal transmitter and battery technology.
Congratulations to all of the WCTC Prize Winners on their impressive progress through the Challenge, and to the Acceleration Prize Winners!
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Spotlight: The University of Pretoria's RhODIS is protecting rhinos by using DNA profiling
20 September 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all our Winners here.
Rhinos are in trouble, targeted by poachers and traffickers to meet the high demand for rhino horn in areas like Southeast and East Asia. Criminal actors are drawn to the trade by the high prices that rhino horn consumers will pay. At roughly $1000 per kilogram, rhino horn has the highest value by weight of any illicit product traded globally. Further, penalties for poaching are low, and forensic evidence to prosecute criminals has been difficult to transfer from countries where products were seized to the countries where the poaching took place.
A new method to extract DNA from rhinoceros and from rhino horn is changing the way these crimes can be tracked. The Rhino DNA Index System (RhODIS) was developed by South Africa’s University of Pretoria’s Veterinary Genetics Laboratory and partners in 2010. The system uses genetic sequences called “short tandem repeats” to produce a kind of barcode unique to individual rhinos, providing a means of liking trafficked rhino products to their origins.
“The amazing thing that we found from our data is how quickly these products move around the world…The RhODIS database of rhino DNA can be exchanged in real time rather than DNA samples having to be shipped,” explains University of Pretoria’s Alan Guthrie. With this DNA analysis, RhODIS can identify the location of the poached rhino, linking a trafficker with the crime scene and helping investigators uncover trafficking routes and criminal networks. RhODIS includes standardized sampling methods, training programs, and an electronic app for collecting sample data. New molecular technologies are continually incorporated into RhODIS as part of research and development.
RhODIS has been supported by South African National Parks, private rhino owners in South Africa, the Namibian government, the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe, and wildlife authorities in Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and Kenya. The RhODIS database includes over 20,000 rhinos from all these countries. RhODIS is also deploying in India.
The hope is that RhODIS will become the global standard for rhino crime investigation and that the team at the University of Pretoria will develop the next generation of RhODIS through genome technologies, touching all countries with rhino populations. “DNA forensics is a critical tool in the fight against wildlife crime,” notes Dr. Sara Carlson, a Biodiversity and Natural Resources Specialist for USAID.
Find out about the Challenge’s talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. All of our Prize Winners, including the University of Pretoria, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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Spotlight: The University of Washington Center for Conservation Biology is using DNA technology and sniffer dogs to protect pangolins
28 August 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all our Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
Pangolins are some of the most bizarre-looking and heavily poached mammals in the world. Trafficked for their meat and scales, all eight species of pangolin across Africa and Asia are currently threatened with extinction. “Over a million have been poached in the last decade,” says Sam Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington.
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Grand Prize Winner the University of Washington is working to change that. “We are developing genetic techniques to pinpoint the origin of large pangolin seizures to find out exactly where they were poached,” explains Wasser. Developing very accurate DNA markers similar to what the FBI uses to identify a criminal at a crime scene allows the University of Washington team, led by Wasser and graduate student Hyeon Jeong Kim, to distinguish pangolin species and populations. Based on these markers, Kim and Wasser are creating a global pangolin genetic reference map, constructed using geo-referenced tissue samples from museums and wild dung samples located by their detection dogs. This genetic reference map will help authorities identify the origin of large pangolin seizures and focus on at-risk pangolin populations and areas. Interestingly, the canines working with Kim and Wasser are rescued from shelters and love putting their noses to work for wildlife protection! Recently in Nepal to locate pangolin dung samples, Kim and detection dogs Skye and Athena and their handlers, Jennifer Hartman and Suzie Marlow, walked about 10 kilometers per day at high elevations. “We ran into many challenges, but Skye and Athena were cheerful and essential to finding the samples,” says Kim.
It is a technique that the University of Washington team has used before. For more than fifteen years, they have been working on a similar approach to track large seizures of African ivory and successfully pinpointed two main countries where almost 100 percent of the ivory had been poached-a huge boon to law enforcement efforts. Wasser’s DNA analysis helped determine that massive transnational organized crime plays an important role in ivory poaching, and his team’s work helps law enforcement prosecute criminals. Now, following the successful application of the technique to ivory, they are working to help uncover and stop syndicated criminals who are targeting pangolins. “Virtually all of the methodology to make this work, and the connections with countries and law enforcement, we have it in place,” notes Wasser.
Find out about the Challenge’s talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. All of our Prize Winners, including the University of Washington, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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Spotlight: The National Whistleblower Center is tackling wildlife crime corruption
21 August 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about our Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
“This innovation will have a revolutionary impact on wildlife crime detection.” That is how National Whistleblower Center (NWC) Executive Director and whistleblower law expert Stephen Kohn introduces the NWC’s prizewinning initiative — the Global Wildlife Whistleblower Program. The program’s goal, says Kohn, is to “incentivize whistleblowers, including NGOs, to report wildlife crime around the world.” To achieve this goal, NWC created an online platform that facilitates the secure reporting of wildlife crime and helps whistleblowers access a free attorney referral service. The service connects whistleblowers with attorneys who can help maintain their confidentiality, prepare information for the appropriate authorities, and assess eligibility—and apply—for monetary rewards under U.S. wildlife protection laws.
Kohn says that many wildlife protection laws, including the Lacey Act and the Endangered Species Act, allow wildlife crime whistleblowers to qualify for monetary rewards if their information leads to successful enforcement actions. By educating the public about these laws and providing a confidential and accessible mechanism to report wildlife crime, the National Whistleblower Center is incentivizing whistleblowers to report the corruption that fuels illegal wildlife, fishing, and logging trades.
It is incredibly difficult for law enforcement to detect such illegal activity without the help of an insider. When implemented properly, whistleblower programs have had great success in uncovering otherwise undetectable crimes —including the detection of illegal dumping from ocean-going ships.
The Global Wildlife Whistleblower Program, one of the Challenge’s Grand Prize Winners, is already receiving game-changing reports of wildlife crime. “I’ve seen how these reward laws [applied in other sectors] have radically changed whistleblowing,” says Kohn, who has represented whistleblowers for more than 30 years. “Thousands of people are willing to step forward because of robust reward laws and whistleblower protections where in the old days, no one would.”
Find out about the Challenge’s talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. All of our Prize Winners, including the National Whistleblower Center, are looking internationally for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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Spotlight: The Zoological Society of London is creating an alarm system for wildlife
7 August 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, highlighting our Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all our Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
Criminal networks that traffic in guns, drugs and people also engage in wildlife trafficking, which is the illegal poaching, transit, trade and sale of wildlife, to fund their activities, generating billions of dollars each year for transnational organized criminal networks. These criminal networks are often far more powerful and have access to more resources than the small law enforcement teams tasked with protecting wildlife. Particularly challenging is covering vast, remote areas on land and at sea. “Our solution is really for underfunded, under-resourced, unfenced protected areas,” explains Sophie Maxwell, conservation technology lead at the Zoological Society of London.
This technology, called Instant Detect, is a multi-sensor alarm system used to discover poachers and illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing, and can cover everything from “a small bird’s nest … [to] a coral reef or even a full-scale rhino sanctuary,” says Maxwell. Instant Detect’s hidden camera traps and ground sensors can detect both people and vehicles and then relay an alert via satellite back to law enforcement teams who can respond in real-time. Acoustic sensors are used in marine areas.
Thus far, Instant Detect has been deployed in Africa, Australia, and even Antarctica. The team is working on Instant Detect version 2.0, making necessary updates to the system and adding new, user-friendly features. The team’s objective is to deploy and scale this technology, which is already making a difference in the fight against wildlife crime, to additional field sites.
All of our Prize Winners, including the Zoological Society of London, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
Find out about the Challenge’s talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here.
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Spotlight: Binomial Solutions is changing wildlife surveillance
31 July 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, highlighting each of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about our winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
Prize Winner Binomial Solutions is changing the face of wildlife surveillance technology. Boosting traditional wildlife surveillance, such as ranger foot patrols or fixed cameras that only operate in visible light, Binomial Solution’s co-founders Ravikant Singh and Raja Brij Bhushan developed a new system, called e-Eye®, that addresses these issues. e-Eye® is a solar-powered, round-the-clock, all-weather wildlife surveillance system that uses intelligent technology to flag and respond to human activity and potential problems while also collecting data on animals without disturbing them.
Singh and Bhushan don’t have a background in conservation, but they care deeply about human-wildlife conflict affecting their communities in India. Though they don’t have a background in conservation, they saw an opportunity to apply their engineering skills and help people and wildlife. “We studied anti-poaching activities, monitoring, counting, any activities going on with regards to wildlife conservation, and found out that technology is not being used that much,” says Bhushan. Supported by Indian governmental authorities, the e-Eye® system was initially installed in 2011 as a pilot program in India’s Corbett Tiger Reserve. After monitoring the program’s results over two years, the Indian government decided to install e-Eye® in two more locations, Kaziranga National Park and the Ratapani Tiger Reserve. “The project has already proven its potential,” notes Bhushan.
Binomial Solutions has concentrated their efforts on working with governmental entities in India, where they are based and where tiger conservation is a major issue. “India has 50 tiger reserves, and all the tiger reserves deserve this kind of system,” says Bhushan. In addition, notes Singh, the pair has an eye on expanding their innovation to countries beyond India in the future.
All of our Prize Winners, including Binomial Solutions, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
Find out about the Challenge’s talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here.
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Spotlight: A portable electronic nose to fight wildlife crime
24 July 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about our Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
Illegal wildlife trade has rapidly escalated into an international crisis, threatening biodiversity, destabilizing national and regional security, and pushing many species towards extinction. A major challenge faced by law enforcement officials is the difficulty in distinguishing illegal wildlife parts. A tool that would allow law enforcement to detect that a shipment of horn is from rhinoceros, and not cattle, would greatly assist in seizing illegal wildlife products and building a legal case against traffickers.
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Center for Forensic Science is developing a portable electronic nose (NOS.E) that can be used by frontline personnel to rapidly identify wildlife parts at ports of entry. NOS.E uses the unique odor signatures of different wildlife species to determine the identity and geographic origin of trafficked samples. NOS.E can be used globally to differentiate a diverse range of trafficked species including large cats (e.g. tigers, leopards), elephants, rhinoceros, pangolins, bears, sea turtles, sharks, and a range of birds and reptiles, all of which have distinct odor signatures.
“Through the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge we have been able to build a network of industry partners and potential customers to test and validate NOS.E, and we’re confident our science is valid and the impact it can have in the fight against wildlife crime is huge,” says UTS Professor Shari Forbes, the innovator behind NOS.E.
All of our Prize Winners, including the University of Technology Sydney, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org. Find out about the Challenge’s Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here.
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New York University fights online wildlife trafficking
10 July 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, highlighting each of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
According to innovator Jennifer Jacquet, Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University’s (NYU), a Grand Prize Winner of the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, the online marketing of trafficked wildlife has intensified in recent years. Jacquet and her collaborator Sunandan Chakraborty of NYU’s Center for Data Science find about 2000 examples of potentially trafficked wildlife and wildlife parts each week through their prize-winning innovation, a digital monitoring and analysis tool called Enforcements Gaps Interface (EGI).
Beginning in 2015, Jacquet and Chakraborty developed EGI to mine hundreds of commercial websites for ads potentially containing illegal wildlife and wildlife products for sale. Jacquet explains, “[for] a lot of the wildlife for sale online, it’s so difficult to tell whether or not it’s illegal… We can give enforcement, retailers a best guess with high, medium, or low certainty that the product for sale is illegal [wildlife].” EGI allows enforcement agencies, NGOs, and online retailers to automatically identify online trafficking of species listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
EGI is currently being tested and developed in English and Chinese, but additional development is needed. Jacquet and Chakraborty have plans to expand EGI’s language capacity to Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Find out about each of the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. All of our Prize Winners, including New York University, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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For the Fishes' app helps protect coral reef fish
26 June 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, highlighting each of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
Tens of millions of tropical fish are taken from the wild for aquariums each year, often in very destructive ways that harm marine wildlife and environments. Of particular concern is the practice of using cyanide, which is poisonous and harms and kills coral reefs, fish, and other marine wildlife. That’s why Hawaii-based Prize Winner For the Fishes developed Tank Watch: The Good Fish Bad Fish Tool, a mobile app designed to inform consumers about these destructive practices and reduce consumer demand for illegally-caught fish.
For the Fishes’ Executive Director Rene Umberger estimates that up to 90% of the aquarium fish sold in markets may have been captured using cyanide. “Most people have no idea this is going on,” says Umberger. “Most people don’t know that just 2% of the fish species typically kept in saltwater tanks can be captive bred.”
Enter Tank Watch. The app is for aquarium hobbyists, helping them to identify captive-bred fish and to steer clear of fish captured on coral reefs. Launched on iOS in 2014 and Android in 2016, For the Fishes is now focused on building up its user base. “We’re looking to get Tank Watch into the hands of about 200,000 new users every year,” says Umberger, with the ultimate goal of preventing approximately one million fish from being captured on coral reefs per year. To achieve this goal, For the Fishes is searching for funding as well as partners and corporate sponsors to help reinforce their conservation message.
Find out about each of Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. All of our Prize Winners, including For the Fishes, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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The New England Aquarium is tackling wildlife trafficking at ports
19 June 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, highlighting each of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
Illegally trafficked wildlife and wildlife products are often hidden in plain sight, smuggled into ports of entry disguised as legally documented cargo. For inspectors at these ports, screening shipment information to find illegal wildlife and wildlife parts is no easy task. “It’s all on paper,” explains New England Aquarium and Roger Williams University’s Andrew Rhyne. Wildlife inspectors must manually sift through paper invoices to determine whether shipments are legal or not, and whether animal species and countries of origin have been correctly identified. It is a difficult and resource-intensive job, and illicit wildlife products easily can slip through the system.
To tackle this issue, Grand Prize Winner the New England Aquarium working with Roger Williams University has developed a tool, Automated Shipment Forensics, that digitizes much of this process. The tool converts paper shipping documents into a digital format, conducts real-time forensic analyses on the information captured, and estimates the likelihood that a particular shipment may contain illegal product. “We’re able to give wildlife inspectors a tool to look at shipments and determine what’s in them at a much faster rate,” explains Rhyne.
Automated Shipment Forensics, a “smart invoice technology”, was selected as one of the Challenge’s Grand Prize Winners for its transformative potential to fill a systems gap and analyze shipments at the “species per box” level or in real-time. The ultimate goal of the New England Aquarium / Roger Williams University partnership is to get the tool into the hands of government wildlife inspectors in the field so that they can be more effective at stopping wildlife crime.
Find out about each of Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. All of our Prize Winners, including the New England Aquarium, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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Paso Pacifico is changing wildlife surveillance
12 June 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
The illegal trade in sea turtle eggs is threatening the survival of all seven species of the world’s sea turtles. However, because the transit routes that poachers use to move their illegal cargo are not known, it is difficult to intercept traffickers and better protect the sea turtles.
Prize Winner Paso Pacifico, a U.S. based conservation NGO operating in Nicaragua, came up with an idea to solve this problem: Why not plant GPS tracking devices disguised as a sea turtle eggs in sea turtle nests so that poachers will inadvertently collect them, allowing conservationists to track their movements? As the sea turtle eggs change hands, their location can be transmitted in real-time across cellular networks in Central America, providing important insights to conservationists and law enforcement authorities about this illicit trade. Creating artificial sea turtle eggs that will fool poachers is no easy feat. Hollywood special effects artists are helping Paso Pacifico develop fake prototypes made from silicon rubber that mimic the look and feel of the real thing.
The hope is that this innovation will provide much-needed data on transit routes used in this illicit trade to help meaningfully combat trafficking in sea turtle eggs. “We’re looking for other partner organizations in Central America and even globally who are interested in deploying this technological solution,” says Paso Pacifico’s executive director Sarah Otterstrom. In addition, Paso Pacifico is searching for more funding, as well as experts to help them manage the data they will collect via the hidden tracking devices to ensure it will be usable to potentially prosecute criminals.
Find out about each of Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. All of our Prize Winners, including Paso Pacifico, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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Protecting songbirds with the power of citizen science
5 June 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
More than 800,000 native songbirds are trapped and traded in Indonesia each year. Prize Winner and conservation non-profit Planet Indonesia’s executive director Adam Miller explains: “On the [Indonesian] island of Java, for example, in order to become a man you have to own five things: a horse, a house, a wife, a dagger, and a songbird.” Miller estimates that 22% of the people on Java own songbirds. With about 150 million people on the island, that number adds up.
Planet Indonesia has identified about 25 native bird species that are almost or already extinct as a result of poaching and the illegal trade in wild birds. In response, they are developing a smartphone app to address the problem. The idea arose when Miller noticed Planet Indonesia staff collecting data in the field using their smartphones to take notes, and wondered if an app might make their jobs easier while raising awareness about the impacts of the illegal bird trade. “We started talking about it, and at the same time, the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge was announced, so it seemed like a perfect fit,” says Miller.
Planet Indonesia has three goals for their app: reduce consumer demand for birds, increase data collection, and work with law enforcement. To that end, they are building an app that engages users in what Miller describes as a “game-like data collection process.” The app will encourage users to collect data on birds in wildlife markets and compete with other users to collect the most data on critical bird species, with top-scorers winning cell phone minutes as incentives. Planet Indonesia will use the data to work with the Indonesian government to better protect songbirds and increase enforcement of wildlife protection laws.
Like many of our Prize Winners, Planet Indonesia is searching for funding and partners that can support them as they develop and scale their innovation. Find out about each of the Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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Spotlight: Bosque Antiguo uses DNA tech to help tackle bird and amphibian trafficking
30 May 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge sources innovative solutions to combat illegal wildlife trade that threatens communities, rule of law, and security, as well as iconic species of wildlife around the world. These crimes involve poaching for the pet trade, including protected scarlet and military macaws, as well as red-eye tree frogs.
Scarlet and military macaws are listed under CITES Appendix 1, which means that trade in these species is permitted only in exceptional circumstances because they are highly endangered in the wild. These bright and beautiful birds have been targeted by poaching for the pet trade, though Mexican law has protected them by regulating capture in the wild since the 1970s, and banning capture altogether since 2008. Poaching harms more than just the birds; poachers may tear down or damage entire trees just to get to vulnerable military macaw nestlings, destroying the habitat for many species in the ecosystem.
Bosque Antiguo, a conservation non-profit in Mexico, is developing genetic profiling kits that will help create DNA databases detailing genetic profiles of these species. These databases will enable authorities to differentiate legally obtained animals from those illegally possessed. In addition, the databases will help prosecutors build cases against poachers and traffickers, and help identify the region of origin of confiscated specimens.
All of our Prize Winners, including Bosque Antiguo, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information about how you can help, please contact info@wildlifecrimetech.org. Find out about each of the Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here.
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Spotlight: YIARI is helping protect slow lorises
22 May 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge sources innovative solutions to combat illegal wildlife trade that threatens communities, rule of law, and security, as well as iconic wildlife species around the world. These crimes include the sale of protected wild animals for the pet trade. Slow lorises, with their adorable faces and soft fur, are heavily trafficked in Indonesia. Like other wild animals, however, they do not make good pets. In fact, slow lorises are the world’s only venomous primate. Traffickers will stuff many animals in small cages and clip their teeth to keep them from biting, which can result in death due to blood loss and infections. The Javan slow loris (Nycticebus javanicus) is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and is considered one of the most endangered primate species in the world due mainly to habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade.
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Prize Winner Karmele Llano Sanchez, Program Director for Yayasan International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI) and her team actively monitor the trade of slow lorises. YIARI provides care for slow lorises seized by authorities, and whenever possible, rehabilitates them for reintroduction into the wild. The YIARI team collects genetic samples while doing routine medical check-ups on the slow lorises in its care, then analyze the samples. YIARI’s goal is to create a genetic database of slow lorises, so that “in the future we can identify the origins of all confiscated lorises,” Karmele says. That would allow YIARI and its partners to more precisely focus their efforts on poaching hotspots.
All of our Prize Winners, including YIARI, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, please get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
Find out about each of Challenge’s 16 Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here.
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Spotlight: A handheld DNA sequencer to fight wildlife crime
15 May 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
The illegal trade in wildlife frequently goes undetected because evidence - bushmeat from a gorilla, caviar from protected sturgeon, a bloodstain on a poacher’s machete - often defies simple visual identification. Even whole animals intercepted in the illegal pet trade can be difficult to classify just by sight. “One of the current problems with wildlife crime investigation,” says Jon Wetton, co-director of the Alec Jeffreys Forensic Genomics Unit at the University of Leicester, “is that in order to identify species, you either have to have a specialist, or you have to send [DNA] away for laboratory analysis, which can take weeks or even months.”
To address this issue, the University of Leicester is testing a portable DNA sequencer to rapidly identify species in the field. “Effectively, when fully developed this machine will allow you to sequence the DNA of any organism, potentially anywhere, very quickly, with a minimal degree of training,” Wetton explains. Rather than waiting weeks for the results of traditional DNA lab tests, the Leicester team intends the device to work so rapidly that “while the potential offender is still there, while the evidence is still in hand, you can screen an item, determine whether it is from an endangered species, and then take the appropriate action,” says Wetton.
Working with partner Oxford Nanopore Technologies to test the device, the University of Leicester is developing the device’s forensic applications in-house. The Leicester team is also partnering with organizations, including Kenya Wildlife Service and Panthera to source relevant DNA samples to ensure accurate results. Funding is needed to scale the application of the portable DNA sequencer.
All of our Prize Winners, including the University of Leicester, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, please get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
Find out about each of Challenge’s 16 Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here.
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Spotlight: Mars Omega LLP boosts wildlife crime intelligence
8 May 2017
Welcome to an installment of our Spotlight series, each highlighting one of our 16 Prize Winners working to combat wildlife crime around the globe. Find out about all 16 Prize Winners here, and check back in on Mondays for a new Spotlight post.
Stopping wildlife crime requires access to information about poachers, traders, exporters, trade routes and financial transactions. But when that information is scattered between various actors, reacting quickly and making important connections when time is of the essence can be difficult. Prize Winner Mars Omega LLP is turning information into intelligence through its wildlife crime intelligence software, the JIGZAW information collaboration system project. The project helps capture, aggregate, evaluate, link, and display information from a variety of different sources.
Over the past six years, Mars Omega LLP has shared the JIGZAW tool with Kenya’s Northern Rangelands Trust, a group of 27 community conservancies in the country. “It’s helped them in a variety of ways in the protection of wildlife and the identification of wildlife crime,” notes Mars Omega’s Chris Holtom, who was formerly Director of the British Army’s Intelligence Corps. The secure, easy-to-use JIGZAW system allows frontline personnel to securely share wildlife crime intelligence on tablets or mobile phones, improving cooperation among rangers and enforcement staff. The software turns information into actionable, precise intelligence, assisting the user in making decisions about needed actions. JIGZAW assists users in effectively planning and developing a strategy or campaign to address the wildlife crime issues they are facing. “It’s giving people an understanding of what’s going on, it’s giving useful, practical intelligence that can be acted on, and it’s giving them an environment in which to plan strategically for the long-term,” explains Holtom.
Now that JIGZAW has been tested in Kenyan conservancies, Mars Omega believes that it can be applied to similar situations around the world. “We want to make it incredibly cheap so there’s instant value to people who are already working very hard, with very limited resources, in sometimes extremely difficult and dangerous circumstances,” says Holtom.
All of our Prize Winners, including Mars Omega, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, please get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
Find out about each of the Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here.
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Happy Earth Day and Happy 2nd Birthday, Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge!
22 April 2017
Happy 2nd Birthday to the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge! On Earth Day 2015, the Challenge issued a global call for science and tech innovations to fight wildlife crime. Two years on, the Challenge has awarded more than $1 million in funding to 16 prize-winning innovators engaged in the fight against wildlife crime, sent Prize Winners to networking events around the world, took South by Southwest and the IUCN World Conservation Congress by storm, hosted Prize Winners for an acceleration “boot camp” in Washington, D.C., and connected our Prize Winners to partners, funders, and technical advisors that have helped them scale their groundbreaking innovations.
On Earth Day, the world turns its attention to the many challenges facing our environment. This Earth Day, we are exceptionally proud of our Prize Winners, each of whom is working to fight wildlife crime, which threatens the survival of many wildlife species and undermines decades of conservation and development gains around the world. From mobile phone apps that tackle Indonesia’s illegal songbird markets to fake sea turtle eggs equipped with hidden GPS trackers to innovations in data science and wildlife surveillance technology, our Prize Winners and Grand Prize Winners are changing the way we combat illegal wildlife trade.
If you’re inspired to take action this Earth Day, consider learning more about the illegal wildlife trade, and how innovators are using the power of science and technology to fight against it. As always, our Prize Winners are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org
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The Challenge is celebrating World Wildlife Day!
3 March 2017
Today is World Wildlife Day! World Wildlife Day originated in 2013, when the United Nations designated March 3, the anniversary of the signing of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a special day to raise awareness about the world’s wild animals and plants.
Today is the fourth-ever celebration of World Wildlife Day, and this year focuses on encouraging and empowering young people to protect endangered animals with the theme “Listen to the Young Voices.” World Wildlife Day also reminds us of the importance of combating poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, which is threatening the survival of many animal species and undermining decades of conservation and development gains. Animals including elephants, tigers, rhinos, pangolins, turtles, sharks, and parrots are headed towards extinction, and criminal activity associated with the illegal trade is undermining national security and economic development in countries around the world. That’s why the Challenge and our Prize Winners are specifically focused on tackling four important issues in the fight against wildlife crime: strengthening forensic evidence, detecting transit routes, reducing consumer demand, and tackling corruption.
Today, more than ever, we are proud of our talented Prize Winners and Grand Prize Winners and their groundbreaking solutions. With innovations including forensic tools that help protect pangolins, birds, frogs, and rhinos; apps that combat the illegal capture and sale of saltwater fish and songbirds; online tools that empower whistleblowers, identify internet wildlife trade, and map global reports of wildlife crime; and detection and surveillance tools that flag poaching, wildlife trafficking, and illegal fishing, these 16 Prize Winners are making significant strides in the fight against wildlife crime.
Find out about each of our Prize Winners and their game-changing science and technology innovations in detail here. As always, our Prize Winners are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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On World Pangolin Day, find out how Grand Prize Winner the University of Washington is protecting pangolins
18 February 2017
Pangolins are some of the most peculiar-looking, and heavily poached, mammals in the world. Today, on World Pangolin Day, we pay special attention to these animals.
Pangolins live in tropical Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and are poached for their meat and scales, and all eight species of pangolin are currently listed as being threatened with extinction. That’s why Challenge Grand Prize Winner the University of Washington is working on a new innovation to help protect these special creatures. Leveraging the power of DNA assignment, their technology solution is designed to sniff out pangolin poaching hotspots, helping authorities identify at-risk pangolin populations and better focus their efforts.
Find out about each of Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations to fight wildlife crime here. All of our Prize Winners, including the University of Washington, are looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale their solutions. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge shone at the IUCN World Conservation Congress!
21 September 2016
On September 1, the Challenge headed to Honolulu, Hawaii, to attend the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress (WCC). Held every four years, the WCC is the world’s largest international conservation event and helps shape the future of conservation and sustainable development. The Challenge was excited to be part of it and to demonstrate how science and technology can fight wildlife crime.
The WCC started off with a bang, with United States Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announcing the imminent reveal of the Winners of the Challenge’s Grand Prize competition onstage during the WCC’s impressive opening ceremonies. Two of these Grand Prize Winners, the National Whistleblower Center and New England Aquarium, accompanied the Challenge to the WCC, along with Prize Winners Binomial Solutions, Paso Pacifico, Planet Indonesia, and the Zoological Society of London.
In addition to connecting with other inspirational innovators and spreading the word about the global wildlife trafficking crisis, this formidable team of Prize Winners led and participated in a variety of sessions and events, most notably two sessions at the U.S. Pavilion, a public outreach space designed to inform participants of U.S. conservation programs.
On September 2, Grand Prize Winner the New England Aquarium and Prize Winners Planet Indonesia and the Zoological Society of London joined the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Natalie Bailey for a packed presentation at the U.S. Pavilion’s Tech Corner. Planet Indonesia’s Adam Miller, New England Aquarium’s Michael Tlusty, and the Zoological Society of London’s Louise Hartley impressed the crowd with their prizewinning innovations, which include an app designed to collect data from wildlife markets, a digital invoicing and data analysis tool, and an innovative new satellite-based wildlife surveillance system.
On September 5, it was Binomial Solutions, the National Whistleblower Center, and Paso Pacifico’s turn to take the stage at the U.S. Pavilion. Raja Bhushan connected live to Binomial Solution’s prizewinning e-Eye wildlife surveillance system, streaming real-time video of wild deer enjoying the morning sunshine in India. Grand Prize Winner the National Whistleblower Center, represented by Stephen Kohn, reminded the assembled crowd of how we each can impact the fight against corruption. And finally, Sarah Otterstrom showed the crowd real prototypes of Paso Pacifico’s fake sea turtle eggs, which come equipped with GPS trackers and will help address the poaching of these eggs.
After more sessions, events, and networking, the Prize Winners and Challenge team returned to their respective home countries to continue to advance the fight against wildlife crime. The National Whistleblower Center, New England Aquarium, Binomial Solutions, Paso Pacifico, Planet Indonesia, the Zoological Society of London, and their fellow Prize Winners are seeking help in scaling or accelerating their innovations to fight wildlife crime. As might be expected, the WCC audience was full of ideas, inspiration, and enthusiasm. We hope you are too – please get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org if you can help!
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On World Elephant Day, find out how Prize Winners are making a difference
12 August 2016
Today is World Elephant Day, and the world comes together to focus on elephant conservation.
Many of our Challenge Prize Winners are developing innovations that will make an impact on the future of these amazing animals. Ranging from the University of Technology Sydney’s portable electronic 'nose' that sniffs out trafficked wildlife parts such as ivory to the Zoological Society of London’s innovative surveillance system that monitors wildlife, including elephants, and alerts authorities to threats, our Prize Winners’ innovations take aim at wildlife crime, including the poaching and trafficking of elephants and ivory.
Prize Winners are looking for partners, advisors, and funders that can help them scale and accelerate their impactful innovations that fight against wildlife crime. If you would like to get involved, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
Find out about each of Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations here.
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On International Tiger Day, find out how Prize Winner Binomial Solutions is impacting tiger conservation
29 July 2016
On International Tiger Day, we pay special attention to these amazing animals. Today, there are fewer than 4,000 wild tigers left on Earth. We can help protect tigers and other threatened wildlife by fighting wildlife crime.
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Prize Winner Binomial Solutions is working hard to impact tiger conservation. Their prizewinning innovation, e-Eye®, is a solar-powered, round-the-clock, all-weather wildlife surveillance system already protecting Indian national parks and tiger reserves. e-Eye® uses intelligent technology to flag and respond to human activity and potential problems while also collecting data on animals without disturbing them.
With the help of the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, Binomial Solutions hopes to expand e-Eye® both domestically and internationally. Binomial Solutions is looking for partners, organizations, individuals, and funding agencies that can help them scale the e-Eye® system and deploy it in other regions of the world. If you would like more information, get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
Find out about each of the Challenge’s 16 talented Prize Winners and their game-changing innovations here.
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Winners of Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge meet in D.C. to accelerate and showcase their innovations to combat wildlife crime
6 July 2016
On May 31, Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Prize Winners from around the world converged in Washington D.C. to participate in a 3-day workshop to accelerate their game-changing science and technology solutions to wildlife crime. These innovations range from portable DNA sequencers to artificial sea turtle eggs, and each targets the illegal wildlife trade, estimated to be worth more than $19 billion per year.
Led by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), with support from partners the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and TRAFFIC, the workshop included leaders from the conservation, law enforcement, and innovation communities. The workshop kicked-off with a call to action by Cynthia Gill, director of USAID’s Office of Forestry and Biodiversity, and Claudia McMurray, the Challenge’s senior adviser and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, who urged Winners to “seize the moment” that the issue of wildlife trafficking is currently enjoying in the media and highest levels of government. In particular, the U.S. National Strategy to Combat Wildlife Trafficking, developed at the direction of President Obama, provides a much-needed unified framework to fight wildlife crime.
A session with a wildlife crime investigator from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice provided a practical, on-the-ground perspective on building strong criminal cases against traffickers, and the potential role of technology in assisting investigations and prosecutions.
With support from experts from USAID’s Global Development Lab, Vulcan Inc., the African Wildlife Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, and others, Prize Winners learned how to form strategic partnerships, leverage resources, source funding, and more. Prize Winners also learned to navigate the tricky waters of entrepreneurship and pitch their innovations to an audience. They demonstrated their abilities at the program’s concluding event, a fast-paced showcase at D.C.’s Cosmos Club, in which each Prize Winner pitched their solution to a packed audience of investors, tech innovators, and conservation professionals.
Prize Winners returned home to apply the lessons they learned and to prepare to enter the Grand Prize competition, a chance to win as much as $500,000 to scale their innovations.
Winners continue to seek partnerships with individuals or groups that can help to accelerate their groundbreaking innovations. Read about each innovation here and email info@wildlifecrimetech.org to get involved!
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Watch: Wildlife Crime is On the Rise
6 May 2016
Wildlife crime is on the rise. Rhino poaching in South Africa has increased by 9,000% since 2007; 100,000 elephants were killed in just 3 years; and the tiger population has decreased by 40% in the last decade. Mission Blue founder and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle, National Geographic journalist Bryan Christy, and USAID Forestry & Biodiversity Office Director Cynthia Gill explain the issue in this short film.
The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, led by USAID in partnership with National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and TRAFFIC, is working to address this global problem. Our 16 Challenge Prize Winners are developing and accelerating amazing new innovations like solar-powered wildlife surveillance systems, fake sea turtle eggs equipped with hidden trackers, and digital data-mining tools, that will help fight wildlife crime and reduce demand for wildlife products.
We can't solve this alone. If you can help our Prize Winners scale their innovations and bring them to new markets, or if you want more information, please contact us at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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Happy Earth Day and happy birthday, Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge!
22 April 2016
Happy Earth Day! On Earth Day last year, the Challenge issued a global call for science and tech innovations to fight wildlife crime. We received 300 worthy applications, and finally chose just 16 Prize Winners, each of whom presented exciting innovations that will impact the fight against wildlife crime. These winning innovations range from solar-powered wildlife surveillance systems to data mining tools that can pinpoint digital wildlife trafficking.
One year later, the Challenge is going strong! We are hard at work helping our Prize Winners to accelerate their innovations and bring them to new markets. The Challenge recently took a trip to Austin, TX, to participate in South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive. And soon, Challenge Prize Winners will compete for one of up to four Challenge Grand Prizes worth as much as $500,000.
On Earth Day 2016, the Challenge is proud to reintroduce its 16 Prize Winners and their impactful innovations that will help fight wildlife crime. But they can’t do it alone! The Challenge is looking for people or groups to work with Prize Winners to scale and accelerate the development of their innovations. If you can help, send us an email at info@wildlifecrimetech.org.
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The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge makes a splash at SXSW!
13 April 2016
On March 11, the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge headed to South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive, an annual technology conference in Austin, TX. While at SXSW, the Challenge presented a panel showcasing science and technology innovations that can help combat wildlife trafficking, connected with other inspirational innovators, and spread the word about the global wildlife trafficking crisis. Want to know more about the panel? Read on, and check out the #wildXSW Storify for more!
On March 13, two of the Challenge’s 16 Prize Winners, Paso Pacifico and Binomial Solutions, joined Challenge judge Crawford Allan of TRAFFIC and wildlife expert Catherine Workman of National Geographic on-stage at SXSW to discuss wildlife crime and technological innovation. In the audience was Alasdair Davies, who represented Challenge Prize Winner Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and took the stage at SXSW the previous day. Workman and Allan explained the complexities of the illegal wildlife trade for the audience. Wildlife trafficking is acknowledged by many, including President Obama, as a global crisis—an illegal trade worth at least $19 billion per year—but Allan, who has 25 years of experience in this field offered an uplifting message. “Because of efforts like the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, I’ve never been more hopeful than I am today,” he said, adding, “If we join together, wildlife crime is a problem that we will solve in our lifetime.”
Eduardo Boné-Morón of Paso Pacifico and Ravikant Singh of Binomial Solutions took the stage to demo inspiring examples of the innovations that bolster this hope. Paso Pacifico is developing artificial sea turtle eggs equipped with hidden GPS trackers that reveal the trade routes used by traffickers of these eggs. Boné-Morón handed around prototype eggs and even surprising three unsuspecting “poachers” in the audience, each of whom found alarmed and trackable eggs near their seats. Alarms, though great for startling an audience, aren’t really how Paso Pacifico’s fake eggs will be recovered: Boné-Morón further delighted the audience by showing a map that revealed other eggs equipped with trackers hidden throughout Austin.
Artificial sea turtle eggs would be a hard act for almost anyone to follow, but not Singh, who wowed the audience with a demo of Binomial Solution’s e-Eye, an innovative solar-powered wildlife surveillance system that uses intelligent software to flag suspicious activity in protected areas, and to alert authorities. Singh shared video footage of rhinos and tigers captured by e-Eye®, which operates in a number of wildlife protected areas in India. Best of all, the SXSW audience was treated to a live and exclusive look through e-Eye®’s thermal vision camera at Nilgai antelope, also known as blue bulls, 8500 miles away in India, a view usually available only to Indian authorities.
Binomial Solutions, Paso Pacifico, ZSL and the other 13 Challenge Prize Winners are seeking help in scaling or accelerating their innovations. The panel closed with a discussion of what both innovators need to achieve these goals. As might be expected, the SXSW audience was full of ideas, inspiration, and enthusiasm. We hope you are too – please get in touch at info@wildlifecrimetech.org if you can help!
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National Whistleblower Center: Leveraging U.S. laws to beat wildlife crime worldwide
9 February 2016
For almost 30 years, the ethos “Honesty without Fear,” has defined the work of National Whistleblower Center (NWC), a team of lawyers and security experts led by executive director Steve Kohn. Based in Washington DC, NWC works with and for whistleblowers everywhere in the world, providing legal advice and representation, practical information about rights and rewards, and opportunities to securely and confidentially make disclosures.
We are pleased to announce NWC as the winner of the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge People’s Choice competition. NWC was also named one of 16 Challenge Prize Winners for its pioneering efforts to tackle corruption linked to wildlife crime. Prize Winners receive $10,000, technical and networking assistance, and a chance to compete for as much as $500,000 in funding.
NWC’s Prize Winning solution, the Secure Internet Wildlife Crime Reporting System, is a secure online platform, a one-stop shop via which whistleblowers can safely and anonymously file reports of wildlife crimes and gain useful information about how wildlife whistleblower laws work.What is a whistleblower and why are they important? Broadly speaking, a whistleblower is an individual or association of individuals that reports fraud, corruption, corporate misconduct, or other violations of law to the appropriate authorities, often on behalf of the public interest. U.S. laws offer whistleblowers greater confidentiality, protection and, potentially, reward than those in any other country. According to recent data, whistleblower reward laws now account for roughly 80 percent of all U.S. civil fraud prosecutions.
NWC supports whistleblowers including those that have information about a violation of three American laws: the U.S Securities Exchange Act, the Commodities Exchange Act, and/or the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Still, getting whistleblowers to come forward—and securing prosecutions from the information they provide—is very difficult and demanding work. Mr. Kohn likens it to navigating a freighter through a storm, with the whistleblower representing precious cargo.
The organization considers two factors as vital in its efforts: confidentiality and monetary reward. While the former is important, it is often not enough to induce witnesses to come forward. Monetary rewards are essential because whistleblowers may face dismissal from work, legal costs, and even long-term stigma. Reward terms can be quite generous: whistleblowers that provide original information leading to a successful enforcement are entitled to between 10 percent and 30 percent of money recovered as a result of their action, if that money is worth over $1 million.
According to Mr. Kohn, only about three percent of witnesses to wrongdoing ever speak about it to someone outside their organization and, of this small proportion, even fewer reach out to the relevant regulatory agency. “Once word gets out about a whistleblower receiving a reward,” he says, “disclosures skyrocket.” However, when whistleblowers suffer ostracism or retaliation, others with valuable information become too frightened to come forward.
The Securities and Exchange Commission changed its rules in 2011 to establish a whistleblower program, and this had a transformative effect. As Mr. Kohn explains, “The United States’ ability to use its laws transnationally to tackle corruption has increased.” The nearly global reach of American law enforcement encourages whistleblowers to come forward, even those living in countries with weak democratic governance.
In the last five years, whistleblowers from 94 countries have used American laws to file over 1500 claims, and over $30 million has been paid to witnesses that exposed wrongdoing[1]. Whistleblowing, claims Mr. Kohn, “has become the number one source of all corporate crime detection.”
Following the 2011 rule changes, an opportunity opened up to more effectively prosecute traffickers and poachers, and NWC seized it. The organization’s co-chair, Dr. Gina Green, who has over two decades of experience in environmental advocacy, played an instrumental role in pushing the launch of NWC’s Protect Wildlife Crime Whistleblowers campaign. NWC’s winning Challenge solution is an integral component of that campaign.
The internet has been a boon for NWC and its ability to reach out to whistleblowers wherever they may be. “We want people to be able to press a button and see information about the relevant laws in their language,” Mr. Kohn says of the online platform. “Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, French and others.” NWC also hopes to use information about trade routes to choose languages in which to provide information.
NWC isn’t resting on its laurels although there’s little competition. “No one else is out there doing what we do, not in the government nor in the private sector,” claims Mr. Kohn. And while the organization is hoping other countries will pass domestic laws that encourage whistleblowing, there’s little evidence to suggest this is imminent. “The U.S. is 25 years ahead of any other country in the world, including the other members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.”
Long a singular force in the global fight against corruption and fraud, NWC has now added wildlife crime to its portfolio.
[1] http://www.whistleblowers.org/anti-corruption
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Help the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Get to SXSW 2016
12 August 2015
The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge has an opportunity to live demo some very promising wildlife tech solutions next March, but first we'll need your help!
The Challenge has applied to host a panel at SXSW Interactive 2016, one of the world's top social innovation summits. Public voting, which begins August 10, 2015, accounts for 30% of SXSW's PanelPicker process. While we think our proposal is great, competition is fierce and we'd love your vote.
Our panel would feature two Challenge Prize Winners demonstrating the technologies they’ve developed to disrupt wildlife trafficking. These could potentially include apps, geospatial systems, and animal-mounted sensors. We expect to announce Prize Winners in late fall of 2015, so SXSW could potentially be the first showcase of these exciting innovations!
We hope you will take the time to learn more about our proposal and vote for us. Before you can do that, you will need to log into the SXSW PanelPicker page. Here’s how:
- Click here to log in to the SXSW PanelPicker page. Click "Create Account" under the blue "Sign In" button to create your free account if you don't already have one. You should receive a confirmation email to activate your account. Once it is activated, enter your email address/password, and click the blue "Sign In" button.
- Click the PanelPicker link and then choose the "Search/Vote" tab to search for our proposal ("Fighting Wildlife Crime with Tech Innovation") or visit our voting page directly.
- Once you are on the voting page, simply click the thumbs up to vote. Feel free to also leave a positive comment about how we are contributing to the fight against wildlife crime!
Voting ends on Friday September 4, 2015, so there's plenty of time to ask your friends on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to vote for us as well. We hope to see you at SXSW 2016, and in the meantime, stay tuned and thanks in advance for joining the fight against wildlife crime.
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How (and why) to Apply to the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge
28 May 2015
An animated video explains the urgent need for science and technology solutions and provides guidance on how to apply to the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge.
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A Call to Action at Washington DC's Environmental Film Festival
13 April 2015
Over the past two weeks, I had the pleasure of attending the DC Environmental Film Festival on behalf of the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge. The festival is a highlight of the annual calendar of green events in Washington, DC, and this year, it focused on the worsening environmental situation across the planet.
Six films were dedicated solely to communicating the consequences of wildlife trafficking not only for numerous species but also for humans. The Festival also offered an excellent opportunity to publicize the Challenge to a range of audiences engaged in wildlife and environmental conservation.
One film, Gambling on Extinction, offered viewers a glimpse of the actors that are driving the illegal wildlife trade around the world, from militant groups and organized crime cartels to investors and poachers. A discussion with representatives from IFAW and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) followed, which helped to further educate the audience about the issue.
Another film, Gardeners of Eden, managed to be both poignant and optimistic. The title is a reference to elephants and the key role they play in dispersing seeds across vast tracts of savannah and forest, and also in balancing delicate ecosystems. Gardeners of Eden highlighted the work of Kenya’s David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which for decades has been engaged in anti-poaching activities as well as rescuing orphaned elephants to rehabilitate and re-introduce them back into the wild. Sex and the City actress Kristin Davis, who produced the film, is a longtime patron of the Trust and led a panel discussion following the film’s screening. I had an opportunity to share with her information on the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge.
The Festival concluded with the much-anticipated Washington, DC premiere of Racing Extinction, by Oscar-winning filmmaker Louie Psihoyos. Mr. Psihoyos and his team went undercover to expose the hidden and not-so hidden world of wildlife trafficking, but also focused on potential solutions, including the development of alternative livelihoods to poaching and trafficking. Through education and partnerships, village communities in Lamakera, Indonesia successfully transitioned from fishing manta rays to ecotourism and other sustainable activities that safeguard the mantas. The statistics are ominous, but Racing Extinction ended on a powerful positive note: it is not too late; we can raise awareness and combat the problem of wildlife trafficking.
The Festival featured other films on wildlife trafficking that I did not manage to see, including 50 Days to Save the African Rhino and Tiger Tiger. If you attended and received one of the Challenge postcards or business cards and have already signed up for the newsletter, help spread the word; the competition opens soon. If not, please sign up. Also, if you have a great science or technology-based solution that might be useful in combating wildlife trafficking, please apply.
Lastly, if you missed the festival, many of the films featured there can be viewed for free online
Andrea Marchesi,
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Assistant
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At Kasane Conference, Progress on Combating Wildlife Trafficking But Much Yet to Do
6 April 2015
On March 25, 2015 the government of Botswana hosted the Conference the Illegal Wildlife Trade in the town of Kasane. Governments from 31 countries from around the globe, as well as several multilateral organizations and NGOs, attended the conference in response to what has become an alarming loss of already endangered wildlife from trafficking by organized criminal networks and gangs.
The conference was designed as a follow-up meeting to the London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, hosted by the Government of the United Kingdom in February 2014. That conference was groundbreaking in that for the first time it brought together governments at the level of head of state, president, and foreign minister to discuss wildlife crime and its threat to regional stability and global security. It was also important because it gathered a broad range of experts from across government agencies – those charged not only with wildlife conservation, but also experts in law enforcement, national security, and finance.
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SXSW Interactive Sparks Ideas on Innovation for Social Good
30 March 2015
South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive is an incubator of cutting-edge technologies and innovation that converges on Austin, Texas, every year. Bringing together the brightest minds in emerging science, tech, and digital, the festival has launched some of the world's most revolutionary tech startups, including Twitter and Foursquare.
But SXSW is more than just a place where revolutionary technologies are born – it is where leading innovators for social good convene to amplify their impact. With more than 30,000 participants from across the world, SXSW 2015 featured more opportunities to connect and learn than ever before – and, of course, a great venue for the Wildlife Crime Technology Challenge to engage potential innovators.
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Scaling Everest? Scaling a Fish? No! Scaling for Development
23 March 2015
Five years ago, eight percent of USAID's funding was devoted to science, technology, innovation and partnerships. Today that share is 40%, according to Todd Sorenson, the Agency's Director of Strategic Planning and Operations for Asia and the Middle East. So, why the sharp increase?
As the world’s population continues to boom, incremental and localized changes from traditional development assistance are not enough to meet the needs of the over 2 billion people living on less than $2 per day. Through programs like the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, the Agency seeks to spur breakthrough development innovations and accelerate their adoption to deliver sustainable development impact.
Borrowing from the venture capital model, USAID is spreading risk and maximizing reward by investing in a broad array of development innovations with an eye to accelerate and scale only the most promising solutions. In the past few years, USAID has sourced 500 innovations across various sectors and at various stages of advancement. If these innovations are successfully brought to scale, breakthroughs like drought resistant maize, chlorhexidine (an antiseptic to prevent infant umbilical infections), and real time data systems to aid in disaster response may impact hundreds of millions of lives in the near term.
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Time to Get Serious about Wildlife Crime
16 March 2015
On World Wildlife Day 2015, March 3, high-level representatives of the United Nations, the United States government, and leading conservation organizations, as well as the ambassadors of Gabon, Thailand, and Germany met at the snowy Central Park Zoo to express a commitment to combating wildlife crime.
The opening remarks emphasized the scale and devastating social, economic, and security consequences of what has escalated in recent years into a crisis. John Scanlon, Secretary General for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), noted that the crisis is perpetuated by the greed of criminals that reap high profits with low risk of penalty, the ignorance of consumers who purchase wildlife products, and the inability of international legal and political systems presently to halt it.
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Happy World Wildlife Day from the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge!
3 March 2015
Today, as USAID and the global community mark World Wildlife Day, we are proud to announce the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, a new initiative that will help bring modern tools to bear on the problem of wildlife trafficking.
The Challenge invites individuals and organizations from around the world to submit innovative science and technology solutions that can be applied to combat the illegal trade of marine and terrestrial wildlife.
The Challenge could not be timelier. The illegal trade in wildlife brings in billions of dollars a year and threatens the survival of numerous species including elephants, rhinos, tigers, sharks, and sea turtles. Demand for wildlife and wildlife products has risen sharply, attracting transnational criminal networks that have helped make wildlife trafficking one of the world’s largest illegal trades. Poaching and the illegal trade in wildlife have far-reaching ecological, national security, and economic consequences that are undermining decades of conservation and development gains.