Anti-hunting group hires 'ethical' surveillance drone
Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:47 am
Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent
Conservationists, humanitarian groups and animal welfare organisations will soon have a new surveillance tool: the remotely piloted aircraft, or drone. ShadowView, a non-profit organisation based in the UK and the Netherlands, is making a variety of drones (from tiny rotorcraft to larger fixed-wing planes) and an expert pilot available for hire - at least to people it agrees with politically. This week, ShadowView agreed to supply drone surveillance to the British anti-fox-hunting group, the League Against Cruel Sports - which suspects the UK's fox-hunting ban is being widely flouted and wants evidence to prove it.
ShadowView co-founder Laurens de Groot says its drones are available to "any individual, organisation or government that meets our ethical standards and whose mission is one we feel fits with our own organisational objectives". A veteran of South Atlantic anti-whaling and African anti-poaching campaigns, he has established ShadowView alongside Steve Roest, a former CEO of the Sea Shepherd direct action group and James Phipps, a seasoned UAV expert and leading light in OpenPilot, a crowdsourced attempt to develop a drone autopilot for aerial stills and video shooting.
But there are considerable risks in flying these fast aircraft in direct action campaigns, and it should not be forgotten that a drone engineer was killed by his own Schiebel Camcopter UAV last year when it lost GPS and rammed his control van in South Korea. "UAVs have an incredibly good flight safety history and ours are much smaller and lighter than the Camcopter which crashed," says de Groot, who adds that ShadowView operators hold all required insurance and perform risk and safety assessments before every flight. The Camcopter fatality is still unexplained - Schiebel of Austria told New Scientist last week that it only recently forwarded its own findings to Korea's investigating aviation authority.
The Countryside Alliance, which supports legal hunts, is unimpressed with the League Against Cruel Sports and its adoption of drones. "We think this is a PR stunt and the chances of the sort of drones being discussed ever providing evidence to support a prosecution against a hunt is very low, " says Tim Bonner, the organisation's director of campaigns. "Flying a drone over a fixed venue on a sunny day is a world apart from tracking a moving pack of hounds and a hunt over many, many miles in directions unknown in the finest winter weather Britain can offer.
"Hunting is an intrinsically chaotic activity where it is nearly impossible for anyone to work out what is going on at any given moment. We think the danger might come from the reaction of animals, especially horses, to these drones if they ever try to follow a hunt."
ShadowView expects trouble - and is prepared to lose drones to shootdowns or other skulduggery on missions, says de Groot, as US animal rights groups have already experienced such losses. "Under some circumstances there may be a risk that our UAVs are shot at by poachers and wildlife criminals, so it is possible we might lose a UAV as a result."
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ShadowView co-founder Laurens de Groot says its drones are available to "any individual, organisation or government that meets our ethical standards and whose mission is one we feel fits with our own organisational objectives". A veteran of South Atlantic anti-whaling and African anti-poaching campaigns, he has established ShadowView alongside Steve Roest, a former CEO of the Sea Shepherd direct action group and James Phipps, a seasoned UAV expert and leading light in OpenPilot, a crowdsourced attempt to develop a drone autopilot for aerial stills and video shooting.
But there are considerable risks in flying these fast aircraft in direct action campaigns, and it should not be forgotten that a drone engineer was killed by his own Schiebel Camcopter UAV last year when it lost GPS and rammed his control van in South Korea. "UAVs have an incredibly good flight safety history and ours are much smaller and lighter than the Camcopter which crashed," says de Groot, who adds that ShadowView operators hold all required insurance and perform risk and safety assessments before every flight. The Camcopter fatality is still unexplained - Schiebel of Austria told New Scientist last week that it only recently forwarded its own findings to Korea's investigating aviation authority.
The Countryside Alliance, which supports legal hunts, is unimpressed with the League Against Cruel Sports and its adoption of drones. "We think this is a PR stunt and the chances of the sort of drones being discussed ever providing evidence to support a prosecution against a hunt is very low, " says Tim Bonner, the organisation's director of campaigns. "Flying a drone over a fixed venue on a sunny day is a world apart from tracking a moving pack of hounds and a hunt over many, many miles in directions unknown in the finest winter weather Britain can offer.
"Hunting is an intrinsically chaotic activity where it is nearly impossible for anyone to work out what is going on at any given moment. We think the danger might come from the reaction of animals, especially horses, to these drones if they ever try to follow a hunt."
ShadowView expects trouble - and is prepared to lose drones to shootdowns or other skulduggery on missions, says de Groot, as US animal rights groups have already experienced such losses. "Under some circumstances there may be a risk that our UAVs are shot at by poachers and wildlife criminals, so it is possible we might lose a UAV as a result."