Drones to keep an eye on national parks
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- A programme to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones, was launched yesterday to survey conserved forestland and wildlife populations in Prachuap Khiri Khan's Kui Buri National Park and Tub Lan National Park, which straddles Nakhon Ratchasima and Prachin Buri provinces.

Nipon Chotibal, chief of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, yesterday signed an agreement for a natural-resource and environmental survey with the Aerospace Engineering Department of Kasetsart University.

He said the drones, which could pass on a real-time feed to the controlling station, would survey the Kui Buri gaur population. The UAVs will also survey land encroachment in Tub Lan, because some areas are difficult for officials to access on foot.

Nipon said he would soon have experts demonstrate a drone to the minister of natural resources and environment, General Dapong Rattanasuwan, and he hoped there would be a drone at each national park.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Drones-to-keep-an-eye-on-national-parks-30244416.html


-- The Nation 2014-09-30

What's new? These are FLYING drones.

What's new? These are FLYING drones.

They have worked out how to use them and show the minister some exciting new footage that does no involve a sudden loss.

Drones keeping an eye on the national parks....

and who keep an eye on those guys who fly the drones???/ this is new...

since when Thailand deploy drones to go any thing? and before you know

it, those drones will be ferrying drugs across the borders....

total waste of money. I'm from Alaska. We have parks larger than this country and Lao put together and we don't need drones to mind what's going on in them.

Lets hope the Drones have a better life span than the Air ship the Army has

There has not been a successful drone program yet in Thailand.

Range is an issue with the off the shelf DIY kits and that is probably what the school is using.

Nothing more than another cash cow for someone's relatives!!

Soon there will be flying bug drones landing in clubs watching all the seniors!

ha ha ha

Time to buy a fly swatter before they are all sold out.

If the right size and quality drones are deployed, this is a good and efficient way to use the department's budget, and also most likely to increase efficiency in time to find paochers/encroachers.

If the right size and quality drones are deployed, this is a good and efficient way to use the department's budget, and also most likely to increase efficiency in time to find paochers/encroachers.

Perhaps they could have used all the human drones now occupying inactive posts.

DRONE

1. A male bee, especially a honeybee, that is characteristically stingless, performs no work, and produces no honey. Its only function is to mate with the queen bee.

These definitions of 'drone' make more sense :

3. a person who lives on the labor of others; parasitic loafer.

4. a drudge

I thought most condos had a drone or two outside.

Seriously this could be a good way of performing the job. From what I have seen many here do take their jobs seriously. They may have to defer to higher authority but given the choice would prefer to do their job well.

Edited September 30, 201411 yr by harrry

I have to assume these are the small drones available in shops and not military grade. In which case they will be a complete waste of time. They have a very small range, normally less than 1km.

Should make good target practice.

I'm just wondering wether drones have been used in other countries to track poachers etc and wether they have been a success .

I was involved with the possibility of working with Thailand around the development of drones a few years back.

I quickly realised the only objective was to scam as much money as possible from the government. The main objective seemed to be setting up enough middle-men to make funds untraceable and I would guess that at most 30% of funds would have made it to the actual project.

The amazing part is that everybody on every level of the project is in on it. They just need to be able to present a case convincing enough to satisfy the anti-corruption people.

The offices will be staffed by relatives and friends of people higher up the food chain who never actually show up but take the salary. The equipment itself will be the cheapest hobby-grade equipment and will be unreliable. There will be repeated requests for more funding due to 'crashes' until the money stops coming and the whole thing will be quietly ramped down and abandoned.

The other amazing thing in existing projects was the issue of 'face' between teams. If someone offended someone else then they would do their best to sabotage their part of the project.

The problem in Thailand is that projects like this are doomed before they even get off the ground.

Drones do not seem to me to be an effective tool in a heavily forested area. They should get some nice footage of the tree tops, though.

total waste of money. I'm from Alaska. We have parks larger than this country and Lao put together and we don't need drones to mind what's going on in them.

But much of Alaska is almost inaccessible........and too cold.....plus.....there isn't 67 million people there........