by Anna Cox
Johannesburg - Be warned – don’t get up to mischief in any of the City of Johannesburg’s parks or nature reserves. Big brother is watching!
Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo (JCPZ) has acquired two drones to monitor its parks and nature reserves remotely.
The drones will be used to survey parks, the zoo itself and all the city’s nature reserves.
Alan Buff, the head of the JCPZ Green Academy responsible for training and innovation, said drones were the answer and would save a lot of time, manpower and money.
"There are many uses for these drones in our department," he said. “For instance, if we are doing animal counts in the reserves and notice some animals missing, we can send up the drone to find them instead of sending out teams on foot to look for them.
“Also if there is a sick animal, we can get the drone close by and get a vet to do a basic assessment of what medical assistance is required.”
Another area they can be used for is for general maintenance of the department’s assets. “For instance, we can send up a drone to survey the roofs of our buildings to see what maintenance is needed,” Buff said.
Other uses for the drones are to conduct tree surveys, to monitor safety and poaching in parks, to check fences around parks and cemeteries, to monitor invasive alien vegetation and, in case of fires, to view the extent of the blaze.
“This will eliminate the need to send in teams who would have to walk to get into certain areas and which can take days,” said Buff.
In the past, the department would have to hire a helicopter at great cost to do these things.
One of the drones cost R24 000, while the other cost R32 000.
Buff said learning to fly the drones requires a lot of practice, and so far, two people had been trained.
JCPZ managing director Bulumko Nelana said the drones can be used to enhance service delivery, and if there was money in the budget, they would be purchasing more of them.
“These are real-time eyes in the sky for us, helping to identify problem areas and to do surveys much faster than we can manually,” he said.
Issues of privacy are being finalised, so at this stage JCPZ is using them only in land belonging to the department, Nelana said.
@annacox