The United States supports the achievement of SDG 15 through partnerships and direct technical assistance to natural resource management agencies and other partners. The e-Eye surveillance system helps protect India’s endangered Bengal tiger from poaching and retaliatory killings from conflict with humans.
Binomial Solutions for USAID
Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
Wildlife trafficking is an international crisis. From 1999 to 2018, law enforcement around the world seized nearly 6,000 different species of plants, trees, and animals. The illicit wildlife trade not only drives biodiversity loss, but also hurts livelihoods dependent on wildlife tourism.
In India, National Park staff face the daunting task of monitoring vast swathes of land for illegal loggers and potential poachers. As part of the U.S. government’s efforts to halt the illegal wildlife trade, USAID, alongside partners, launched the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge in 2014 to offer rewards to organizations using innovative techniques to tackle wildlife crime and trafficking.
Among the 16 winners was Binomial Solutions, an IT solution and service provider based in India that created a wildlife surveillance system called electronic-Eye, or “e-Eye,” for short. After winning one of the Tech Challenge prizes, which provided critical funding support from USAID and institutional partners, Binomial Solutions successfully patented the e-Eye technology and began implementation in India’s Kaziranga National Park.
As Binomial Solutions co-founder Ravikant Singh explained, “Originally, this [system] was designed for anti-poaching. But it also helps forest officials manage forests, check the state of the prey base, check the habitat, and monitor tree-cutting and deforestation. So, it is helping in a lot of ways apart from just being anti-poaching software.”
As the e-Eye system is installed in more parks across India, they will have more data to feed into the system and improve its capabilities. Through the Tech Challenge, the team has proven that with the right institutional and financial support, it can push technological boundaries for the entire conservation and development sector.