We understood that Malawi has been forging ahead with initial efforts to introduce drone technology into wildlife conservation in recent years.

Now, seeing as the government has announced plans to spread these efforts across six wildlife reserves in the country, it is safe to say those pilot projects at Kasungu National Park were a success.

According to Bird Story Agency, the Malawi government will be deploying drone technology to shore up other conservation operations at Nyika, Kasungu, Nkhotakota, Majete Vwaza, Liwonde and Elephant wildlife reserves.

Before the introduction of drones, game wardens, their ground vehicles and their weapons have been the sole defence medium standing between poachers and wildlife at these parks; carrying out patrols, especially along the boundary separating areas reserved for the animals and people.

Obviously, deploying without eyes in the sly has its limitations; at Kasungu National Park for example, the government is actively to reaccommodate elephants again after the first population was decimated by poachers, from a high of 1,200 strong in the 1970s to as little as 120 elephants by the turn of the century.

To ensure that the aggressive poaching of elephants for their tusks would not return to haunt the new population, parks officials roped in the help of drone services company DroneDeploy, which says drone flights in wildlife conservation were for two main purposes – monitoring human activities and monitoring the habitat and wildlife.

“For human activities, encroachment on the boundaries of the park can be a major issue,” the company said in its 2022 Social Impact report on community responsibilities.

“Using progress flights, the rangers can see if people are building structures or farming nearby, or if elephants are moving outside the park and raiding neighbouring farms.

“For habitat monitoring, the rangers use drone maps to look at the effects elephants are having on the park’s ecosystem, ensuring they are not overgrazing or having a negative effect on the ecosystem.

“The rangers are exploring new uses of reality capture tools to monitor the elephants themselves. Using DroneDeploy, they can find and identify herd locations and behaviour, and even measure the size of individual elephants. Together with DroneDeploy developers, we are also testing AI tools to count individuals.”

Work towards repopulating the Kasungu National Park with elephants started in 2015, with authorities embarking on a rigorous conservation journey that has reduced elephant poaching to zero since 2018. 

The help drone technology has given to monitoring and management efforts is one of the reasons why no elephant has lost its life to poachers in five years.

“DroneDeploy’s social impact program has provided incredible value for our small team working to protect wildlife in Malawi,” said Catherine Sibale, a ranger at Kasungu National Park.

“It has allowed us to put the technology into the hands of more people, allowing them to be more efficient and effective in their work.”

Information on whether the Malawian government had chosen to keep the partnership with DroneDeploy on this expansion was not immediately available.

Drones were also introduced into Kasungu through the help of the Chinese government, which donated one drone to the Department of National Parks and Wildlife; while two others were purchased and adapted for elephant management by the International Federation on Animal Welfare (IFAW), with rangers trained to fly them.

And as recently as June this year, the government has also worked with a local start-up Tech365 on the same mission in Kasungu.

Wildlife and Parks ministry spokesperson, Joseph Nkosi, said the use of drones would change the approach taken in Malawi’s wildlife conservation.

“It is envisaged that the use of drones in wildlife conservation will bring new dimensions in both protection and research,” he said.

“Use of drones provides a quick, easy and cost-effective way to monitor wildlife from a distance… they can be an effective tool for wildlife research, monitoring and counting animals.”

At Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, manager David Nangoma was full of praise for drone integration into park management, saying it was a major upgrade to ranger operations.

“Illegal poachers know the movement of animals well; that is why they go straight and kill them,” Nangoma said, adding that game rangers would rest easy, in the knowledge that they would be aware of the whereabouts of the animals in their charge.

“They (poachers) cannot spend time hunting because they know that they may be caught. So we really need strategies that are able to monitor everything that is happening in these places, even treating injured animals.”

As for community acceptance, many people in Malawi are aware of drones flying above them, seeing as the country is home to the largest drone corridor on the continent, houses the African Drone and Data Academy, and also hosts a number of drone logistics companies that deliver medical supplies across rural communities.

That is besides the drone being deployed as part of recovery efforts in the recent flooding disasters that affected the country after cyclones visited.