In the middle of September, an internet protocol address located in Pune attempted to access the official email account of K Ramesh, a scientist with the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun. Among the contents of his inbox were encrypted position details of a tracking collar the institute had fitted to an adult male tiger in the Bori-Satpura Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
Officials at the game reserve were concerned that this was the precursor to a sophisticated attempt at poaching. Two weeks later, the chief wildlife warden of Madhya Pradesh, registered a case with the MP cyber cell on September 30. The media in India and abroad soon reported that a crafty Pune-based techie had hacked this system.
But the attempted hack never happened at all.
A member of the Wildlife Institute research team had simply attempted to download information from his mobile phone, which had a dynamic IP that incorrectly identified it as being based in Pune.
“The system monitors when people download information,” said Ramesh in a conversation with Scroll.in. “In this case, it picked up a dynamic IP address and gave a message that someone was trying to hack the system.”
In February, the Wildlife Institute asked the MP police to withdraw the case.
While Ramesh maintains that there was never any threat to the tiger in question – they have a double layer of encryption around the data, which can only be decoded using one particular software – some people remain concerned that criminal poachers might turn to technology to hunt endangered animals more efficiently, particularly as more information about the animals in question is digitised.
In another episode linking technology to poaching, a park seemingly in South Africa, recently put up a notice requesting tourists not to tag photographs of rhinoceroses posted to the internet with locations, as these images could help to lead poachers to the animals. However, experts in India remain unconvinced that this could be a serious threat to Indian reserves. The threat of cyberpoaching in the Indian context, they say, seems unlikely for now.
“Poachers have more information than any tourist,” said Anish Andheria, president of the Wildlife Conservation Trust. “We go to reserves because we love it, but poachers’ lives are dependent on it. Poachers sometimes know more about wildlife than protectors of forest.”
Even a successful attempt to hack the Wildlife Institute’s systems is unlikely to help poachers much. According to Shardul Bajikar, editor of Natural History at wildlife magazine Saevus, only eight or nine tigers in the country have been radio-tagged for monitoring. This, he said, is “an insignificant fraction of the overall tiger population”.
Poachers, he added, could access “a much bigger, current and up-to-date database of tigers from local elements and have absolutely no need whatsoever to use geotagged images – which may be from any time and date in past – or hack radio collars which will help them access a small number of tigers who incidentally are being also tracked and protected better.”
All three maintained that poachers rely on local sources and their own knowledge of their prey’s rhythms, not on technology, to source their information.
“Tiger poaching is by a small group of people who have clear information from local sources,” Ramesh said. “They plan their operation in three days. If they succeed, good for them; otherwise, they move on. That is why they don’t get caught.”
Geotagging is also unlikely to become a concern at any point, even as more of India is accessing internet through their smartphones. Tourists in India are legally permitted access to only 20% of a reserve, whereas in Africa and Australia, they have much freer access. This means that only those animals that frequent that part of the reserve are in particular danger of being photographed, let alone being tracked down days later.
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Officials at the game reserve were concerned that this was the precursor to a sophisticated attempt at poaching. Two weeks later, the chief wildlife warden of Madhya Pradesh, registered a case with the MP cyber cell on September 30. The media in India and abroad soon reported that a crafty Pune-based techie had hacked this system.
But the attempted hack never happened at all.
A member of the Wildlife Institute research team had simply attempted to download information from his mobile phone, which had a dynamic IP that incorrectly identified it as being based in Pune.
“The system monitors when people download information,” said Ramesh in a conversation with Scroll.in. “In this case, it picked up a dynamic IP address and gave a message that someone was trying to hack the system.”
In February, the Wildlife Institute asked the MP police to withdraw the case.
While Ramesh maintains that there was never any threat to the tiger in question – they have a double layer of encryption around the data, which can only be decoded using one particular software – some people remain concerned that criminal poachers might turn to technology to hunt endangered animals more efficiently, particularly as more information about the animals in question is digitised.
In another episode linking technology to poaching, a park seemingly in South Africa, recently put up a notice requesting tourists not to tag photographs of rhinoceroses posted to the internet with locations, as these images could help to lead poachers to the animals. However, experts in India remain unconvinced that this could be a serious threat to Indian reserves. The threat of cyberpoaching in the Indian context, they say, seems unlikely for now.
“Poachers have more information than any tourist,” said Anish Andheria, president of the Wildlife Conservation Trust. “We go to reserves because we love it, but poachers’ lives are dependent on it. Poachers sometimes know more about wildlife than protectors of forest.”
Even a successful attempt to hack the Wildlife Institute’s systems is unlikely to help poachers much. According to Shardul Bajikar, editor of Natural History at wildlife magazine Saevus, only eight or nine tigers in the country have been radio-tagged for monitoring. This, he said, is “an insignificant fraction of the overall tiger population”.
Poachers, he added, could access “a much bigger, current and up-to-date database of tigers from local elements and have absolutely no need whatsoever to use geotagged images – which may be from any time and date in past – or hack radio collars which will help them access a small number of tigers who incidentally are being also tracked and protected better.”
All three maintained that poachers rely on local sources and their own knowledge of their prey’s rhythms, not on technology, to source their information.
“Tiger poaching is by a small group of people who have clear information from local sources,” Ramesh said. “They plan their operation in three days. If they succeed, good for them; otherwise, they move on. That is why they don’t get caught.”
Geotagging is also unlikely to become a concern at any point, even as more of India is accessing internet through their smartphones. Tourists in India are legally permitted access to only 20% of a reserve, whereas in Africa and Australia, they have much freer access. This means that only those animals that frequent that part of the reserve are in particular danger of being photographed, let alone being tracked down days later.
