Eco Defense Group is a unique consultancy designed to develop and implement solutions in areas of poaching crisis in Africa.
In the past, they’ve created, supplied and mentored marine and special operations units, built and guided training programs, partnered with the most important parks in Africa and even helped firefighters jump out of helicopters on fast ropes. We’ve just been shown that this past month, Eco Defense Group has taken an interesting step to use satellites — and the ingenuity of Elon Musk — to make possible communications where they have never before been available.
Pursuing a unique partnership last month, the non profit deployed field teams to remote areas of national parks in Africa with portable Starlink devices to aide in countering specific poaching crises. Where they go, even the group can’t admit to—and that’s the point of how effective.
Certain areas in Southern Africa are wild — truly wild — and necessarily the home of the endangered and threatened species that wildlife Rangers professionals work tirelessly to protect. In these areas, infrastructure is limited, communications sometimes impossible and the execution of counter-poaching strategies to defend wildlife can be remarkable difficult, even with the training and tools that groups like Eco Defense Group provide.
Now the group has started to deliver sponsored Starlink devices as the Starlink “Constellation” has begun to glitter the night sky over Africa. One can imagine that this will be a game changer for wildlife protection along with a variety of unconsidered industries working in remote places.
Eco Defense Group is one of the more innovative non-profits that we’ve seen (even if you rarely see much of them), and this kind of intelligent thinking is exactly why they are both effective and invisible.
The modern world, having ignored the crisis of African animals that are being poached to extinction, has arguably now offered a tool that could, in places, change the game against the poachers that seek rhino, lion, elephant and other species for black market exploitation.
