Telangana plans to leverage AI for preventing poaching and illegal logging

Telangana government plans to leverage artificial intelligence to prevent poaching

The Telangana government plans to leverage artificial intelligence for monitoring forests in real-time, in a bid take prompt action against poaching and illegal logging.

The State government is looking for AI solutions that can identify snares or other hunting materials; detect movement of unauthorised persons in forests; track vehicles to avoid pilferage and so on. The AI solution should also be able to map an individual's entry in a forest area with their identity, number of times they visit the forest area and so on.

These are part of a RFP that the Telangana government has floated to develop and implement an AI-based solution that would, not just aid in detecting illegal logging or poaching, but also in wildlife conservation in the State.

Currently, various forest areas, the State government has installed cameras to monitor wildlife, potential eco-tourism zones and so on.

However, the data captured through these cameras are stored in SD cards, which the government notes, that it gets full every 15 days and the cards have to be replaced twice every month for all the cameras installed in the forest.

The government also notes that extracting information from these cameras are a manual task, which makes real-time monitoring of such areas unviable.

This drawbacks were identified earlier and a few years back a test project to leverage deep learning techniques in identifying anomalies and predict potential risks in forest areas was taken up.

The pilot was implemented in Amarabad and Kawal Tiger Reserves. In this pilot, a startup processed 4 million historical images from the two forest reserves to provide insights to forest officials.

However, this pilot's effectiveness too has been constrained due to the reliance on data stored on SD cards.

"To rectify this, the proposal calls for the integration of real-time monitoring, allowing for the immediate and continuous analysis of data, thus significantly enhancing the system's performance, reliability, and
ability to respond to dynamic conditions and emerging threats in real-time," the RFP said.

"This transition towards real-time monitoring represents a crucial step towards ensuring the pilot's success and maximizing its impact on forest surveillance efforts," it added.

Apart from illegal logging and poaching, the government also plans to use the AI solution for identifying different species of animals, track animals' behaviour, detect fire, and felling of trees.