Under the current trajectory, the future of many living organisms is uncertain. They are increasingly affected by pressures from unsustainable agriculture, fisheries, mining and other human activities that contribute to habitat loss and degradation, overexploitation, climate change and pollution. The rapid loss of wildlife species today is estimated to be up to 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.
Innovative technologies such as big data analytics, image-recognition algorithms, RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System), crowd-sourcing, etc., are more and more considered by many actors in the wildlife conservatory community as essential tools to improve the efficiency of wildlife protection programs. They can offer for instance accurate, comprehensive and timely information related to habitat change, animal tracking, poaching, etc.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
Kick-start Activities aim at elaborating the business opportunity and the technical viability of new applications and services exploiting one or more space assets (e.g. Satellite Communications, Satellite Navigation, Earth Observation, Human Space Flight Technology).
This Call for Kick-start Activities is dedicated to the theme "Wildlife Protection". It looks for innovative applications and services based on the integration of space and non-space technology, offering enhanced and affordable support to conservatory plans, while ensuring economic sustainability to the involved private actors. Three main topics of relevance have been identified:
- Wildlife monitoring, tracking and inventory
- Habitat monitoring and assessment
- Fighting against poaching and illegal wildlife products trading
Exploitation of space-based data and technology is key for the proposed Kick-start Activity theme:
- High-resolution satellite Earth Observation images can be used to periodically monitor the environmental changes affecting wildlife habitat as well as identify and monitor (some) wildlife movement patterns and species numbers.
- Satellite Navigation is essential to track & trace animals, control and command remotely piloted aircraft systems, geo-localise in-situ measurements from various sensors, etc.
- Satellite Communications may be used for in-the-field communications in remote areas. In addition the ARGOS satellite system combined with ARGOS transmitters allows precise and continuous tracking of animals.
Authorisation Of Funding
For the Thematic Call on "Wildlife Protection", the following ESA Member States have already made funding available:
Germany, Luxembourg, Norway and the United Kingdom.
In case you intend to submit a proposal for a Thematic Call and your company/organisation resides in another country, you are encouraged to contact the National Delegation.
WEBINAR Recording
This video is a recording of the webinar which was held on 25 July 2017. It provides clarifications to interested stakeholders and potential bidders, including a Q&A session.
WEBINAR Presentations
Registered users can now download the webinar presentation from 25 July 2017 below.
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