Indian-American teen invents device to spot elephant poachers in real time

It was Anika Puri's visit to India four years ago, which changed her outlook towards poaching and consequently drove her to invent a device that could spot elephant poachers in real time.

During that fateful visit, she went to a market in Mumbai, where she saw various items made of ivory including jewellery and statues. Though elephant hunting has been illegal in India since the 1970s, there is no shortage of incidents of poaching, which have been reported across the nation as there is a huge demand of elephant tusks or ivory in the market.

“I was quite taken aback,” the 17-year-old from Chappaqua, New York, told US-based Smithsonian Magazine. “Because I always thought, ‘well, poaching is illegal, how come it really is still such a big issue?’”


According to the Indian-origin high-schooler, her device is four times more effective than drones as it can detect poachers by analysing their movements in thermal infrared videos. This device is called EISa, which is based on a machine-learning-driven software and can observe and analyse the movement patterns of humans and elephants in videos.

Meanwhile, the overall cost of the tool is low because ElSa uses a $250 FLIR ONE Pro thermal camera, which is much cheaper and effective than other high-resolution thermal cameras, which are generally used to detect movement.

“I realised that we could use this disparity between these two movement patterns in order to actually increase the detection accuracy of potential poachers,” added the teenager.

Here's how the device works:
It is based on a simple process where the EISa camera attached to an iPhone hovers over a park on a drone to detect the movements of elephants or humans. Anika Puri's invention also earned praise from Jasper Eikelbloom, an Equipment ecologist at Wageningen University.

Eikelbloom has tested this low-cost device and called the invention 'remarkable'.

Check out the video:



Elephant poaching in India:
Over the past three years, 90 cases of seizure of elephant tusks/ivory have been reported across India along with 29 cases of poaching of elephants, according to the data shared by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC). The year 2021 saw the maximum number of elephant tusk seizures with 42 cases and also the highest number of poaching attempts with 14 incidents. In the year 2018-19, six elephants lost their lives due to poaching attempts.