Voices Devdutt Pattanaik Ravi Shankar Anuja Chandramouli Neha Sinha Sheila Kumar Mata Amritanandamayi THE new sunday express MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment august 17 2025 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Code Green Conservation goes high tech with AI, thermal drones, high resolution cameras, satellite feeds and DNA mapping to bring down the threats to both wildlife and people living in proximity I By Sneha Mahale t was burning bright. For three months, a four-year-old tiger roamed across 12 villages in Lucknow’s Rehmankheda area, killing 25 animals and keeping residents on edge in the forest of the night. Daily life slowed as people stayed indoors, wary of the elusive predator that was a ghost with stripes. To track it down, forest officials took a blended approach—mixing traditional tracking methods with modern technology They installed AI-powered thermal cameras at five key . points and deployed three thermal drones to scan the forest canopy On the ground, . trained elephants Diana and Sulochana moved through dense undergrowth where vehicles couldn’t go. Meanwhile, a wildlife expert in Bengaluru monitored live camera feeds, studying the tiger’s patterns to anticipate its movements. Nearly 40 per cent of bird species in India have declined in just a decade, according to the State of India’s Birds 2023 report GPS trackers are attached to birds to monitor migration routes, nesting areas, and habitat use In Tamil Nadu, since 2008, 11 elephants had died in train collisions along a single seven-km-stretch of track An AI-powered thermal surveillance system that involved cameras to detect heat signatures in real-time was put in place GPS satellite tracking follow the movement and migration of wild tortoises. They help conservationists understand their range and habitat use. While eDNA analyses the genetic fragments left behind by marine organisms In March, came the breakthrough. AI cameras captured the tiger returning to a fresh kill. A ranger team was dispatched. A tranquiliser dart was fired, but the tiger fled, covering 500 metres before disappearing into thick foliage. Drones followed it from above, helping rangers close in for a second shot. Within 15 minutes, the animal was safely sedated. The 230 kg beast was then caged and transported to the Bakshi Ka Talab range office. The entire operation ended without a single human injury thanks to the , combined effort of AI surveillance, aerial tracking, and coordinated fieldwork. In the past, conserving wildlife in India often meant navigating dense jungles with binoculars, spending months waiting for elusive animals to appear, or diving into the sea with nothing more than a net. Today conservationists are , adding something new to their toolkit: algorithms, thermal cameras, drones, and even genetic samplers. From the cold, high-altitude deserts of Ladakh to the lush mangroves of the Sundarbans, across coral reefs, tiger corridors, and railway tracks, a quiet revolution is unfolding. Technology is changing not only how we protect wildlife, but how we understand it. In Ladakh, where the air is thin and snow leopards are more myth than mammal to most, a team of researchers set out to count the uncountable. “Tough terrain and a lack of transport facilities were major challenges,” recalls Pankaj Raina from the Department of Wildlife Protection, Leh. “We carried rations and equipment on ponies and set up temporary camps at subzero temperatures. Some places can only be accessed in winter, when the streams freeze. So, we’d place cameras one winter and return the next to collect them.” Over two years, they trekked more than 6,000 km and installed 956 camera traps across India’s largest snow leopard habitat. But their real challenge began only after they returned with nearly half a million images. No human team could sort through that volume of footage manually . So they turned to AI. A system called CaTRAT, trained to recognise Himalayan wildlife, scanned each frame to identify species. But something more precise was required. A second programme was deployed, this one trained to analyse forehead patterns, which are more reliable. “Only the clearest image from each sequence was used,” explains Raina. “These were digitised and processed through AI software that scored pattern similarities, creating a photographic library of each individual snow leopard.” The study published in PLOS One , earlier this year, revealed a hopeful truth: snow leopards in Ladakh are thriving. And for the first time, India now has a national photo library of snow leopards—a visual archive that will enable researchers to monitor individual animals. Far to the south, in the forested corridor between Walayar and Madukkarai in Tamil Nadu, a different crisis was unfolding. Since 2008, 11 elephants had died in train collisions along a single seven-km-stretch of track. In 2024, the Coimbatore Forest Division responded by installing an AI-powered thermal surveillance system. The setup involved cameras that detect heat signatures in real-time, capable of spotting large mammals even in pitch darkness or heavy rain. The moment an elephant is detected near the tracks, the system sends instant alerts to train operators and forest teams. In its very first year, the system generated over 5,000 alerts, enabled 2,500 safe elephant crossings—and recorded zero elephant deaths. Technology is also transforming how humans coexist with big cats. In Maharashtra’s TadobaAndhari Tiger Reserve, AI-enabled cameras were installed on the edges of 13 villages starting in 2023. These motion-sensitive devices don’t just record tiger activity—they analyse it, sending real-time alerts to villagers when tigers are nearby . The system has worked so well that it caught the attention of Prime Minister Modi, who mentioned the effort during the 110th episode of Mann Ki Baat. Keeping an Eye In some cases, the key to peace between people and animals lies not in staying alert on the ground, but in rising to the skies. When elephants returned to Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra after decades of absence, they brought fear and uncertainty to farming communities. “We had only heard stories from our grandparents,” says Bhima Potavi, a farmer from Arewada. “Now the elephants were here, in our fields. We were not prepared.” In response, the wildlife rescue NGO RESQCT began using thermal drones. These unmanned aerial vehicles fly over the forest, scanning for body heat and mapping elephant herd movement—even at night or through thick vegetation. The drones collect data that help forest officials predict crop raids, guide elephants away from human settlements, and ease community tension. Meanwhile, in Gujarat, drones are serving a very different animal. Mugger crocodiles, common along riverbanks, have long been difficult to count. But each crocodile’s back carries a unique pattern of scutes— raised scales that function almost like fingerprints. Researchers from Ahmedabad University trained a machine learning model to identify individual crocodiles by their scute patterns. Using drones to photograph basking muggers from above, they created an entirely new way to study these elusive reptiles. “Wild or free-ranging animals are never easy to study But that shouldn’t . stop us,” says Ratna Ghosal, an associate professor involved in the project. “We need to keep refining and applying technology to gather sharper, more meaningful data.” While drones offer a bird’s-eye view, a more silent kind of intelligence is rising from the water, soil, and even animal droppings. In the coral-rich waters of Lakshadweep, reef ecosystems are being stressed by warming seas, El Niño events, and human activity Until . recently reef surveys depended , on sporadic diving expeditions. But in 2024, scientists from the CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography conducted India’s first environmental DNA, or eDNA, study in the archipelago. By filtering seawater and “The high cost of the technology and the lack of technical capacity are major factors limiting its broader adoption.” —Chetan Misher, ecologist, Wildlife Conservation Trust analysing the genetic fragments left behind by marine organisms—through skin, waste, or mucus—they identified a wide range of life. The study found DNA from four coral families, nine echinoderm species, 19 fish species, and many kinds of arthropods, mollusks, sponges, and algae. “For years, we only saw what the net brought up,” says Adil, a fisherman from Agatti Island. “Now, they show us lists of species in the seawater. It makes us see how much we’re missing and what we must protect.” On the eastern edge of India, in the wetlands of West Bengal, another silent threat was discovered. Native fish populations had been dropping. “We always blamed the nets or the weather,” says Shibnath Das, a fisherman from the Sundarbans. “Now we know something else is swimming in and taking over.” That “something else” turned out to be Nile tilapia, a hardy invasive species from Africa. Researchers from ICAR used eDNA DETAILS techniques to detect tilapia by isolating its unique genetic fingerprint. This confirmed the invasive species’ spread across key wetland systems and helped design better control strategies. Sometimes, the most powerful information lies in the most unglamorous places—like bird droppings. Between 2018 and 2022, researchers from NCBSTIFR, Bombay Natural History Society University of Cam, bridge, and other partners studied endangered vultures by collecting faecal samples across six states. “We focused on places where vultures had been seen recently says Moushami ,” Ghosh, now academic dean at the Nature Conservation Foundation. They used DNA metabarcoding, a technique that identifies multiple species from a single environmental sample, to determine each bird’s species, sex, and diet. By layering this data over livestock density maps, they discovered that most vultures still rely heavily on livestock carcasses—even inside protected areas. This is troubling, since the veterinary drug diclofenac, still in circulation despite bans, remains deadly to vultures. The findings offer both a warning and a direction for future policy . The Right Toolkit In the parched savannas near Beawar, Rajasthan, the ground crackles like dry paper underfoot. Years ago, these plains were a mosaic of native grasses and hardy shrubs, resilient to drought and integral to the ecosystem. But today they’re , Turn to page 2