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Tourists on safari track leopards and lions just as well as scientists
Kasim Rafiq had spent all day in the woodlands of Botswana looking for a one-eared leopard named Pavarotti—with no luck—when his Jeep sank grill-first into an abandoned warthog burrow. Two hours later, frustrated and exhausted after extricating his vehicle, he passed some tourists on safari. He told the guides about what had happened, and they laughed. They'd seen Pavarotti earlier that morning.
The encounter got Rafiq, a wildlife researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, thinking: Wildlife tourists encounter animals like Pavarotti every day and take hundreds of photos. But once the tourists leave, they take those data with them. Rafiq wondered whether there was a way to use the photos they took for research. Now, a monthslong trial with two dozen different groups of tourists suggests not only is it possible, but it's also far cheaper than traditional methods of tracking.
To count large animals like lions and hyenas in a given area, researchers typically use one of three methods. They use motion-triggered camera traps to photograph passing animals. They look for tracks by driving along predetermined routes. Finally, they bring the animals to them by playing sounds at specific stations. (If you're interested in lions, Rafiq says, "you play the sound of a dying wildebeest.")
But all these methods have their drawbacks. Camera traps, for instance, are expensive and easily knocked down by curious creatures. When it's too dry or too windy, tracks don't show up in the dust. And researchers often have difficulty obtaining permits for call-in stations, especially in areas with lots of tourists.
To test the method of using tourist photos, Rafiq and his colleagues surveyed the populations of several large carnivores in Botswana's Okavango delta, including lions, hyenas, leopards, wild dogs, and cheetahs using traditional methods. They then had more than 50 people in 26 tour groups provide safari photos over 3 months.
Before they set out, tourists were outfitted with GPS devices to record their location at 1-minute intervals. When they returned, they uploaded more than 25,000 photos to Rafiq's computer. Rafiq and his team tagged the photos with times and locations and identified individual animals based on patterns on their faces or bodies. They then estimated the number of animals in the area using computer models.
It worked
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 24 2019, @02:16PM (1 child)
The guides are responsible for getting the tourists where they can take the pictures. Sounds to me like they should start paying the guides to track the animals for them. But, as is typical, no one wants to pay for all this help. Instead, they cut the guide out, and appeal to tourists to give them free stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @06:22PM
Yes. What's the problem?
The tourists have paid for the guide's time, and get the ownership of everything they can get from that experience. They in turn give (or sell, or whatever) that information to the scientist. It's effectively first sale doctrine.
If the scientists want or need higher quality data, they can always pay the guides as you say.
In analogy, "the TV manufacturer did a lot of work to make that TV. If you re-sell it used to somebody else, shouldn't the TV manufacturer get a cut of that sale? You are effectively robbing that TV manufacturer of another sale."