Protecting India's forests

Via Sepia Mutiny: Bugging Trees to Stop Logging, this ingenius approach:

The state of Kerala is resorting to drastic measures to defend its dwindling forests of rare sandalwood trees from illegal logging. Its Forest Department is planning to use satellite tracking to protect the trees. Under the plan, microchips will be embedded inside the trees.

This seems to me an example of technology transfer -- the sort of very cheap inventory control, RDFI is it called? -- used by large retailers and which makes terrific sense in this application.

I'd be curious to know more details: how the chips are place and where because if the chip is obvious, then of course the poachers will simply remove it before or just after cutting the tree. So, one assumes, it must be hidden rather cunningly to avoid detection, at least long-enough to allow the authorities to trace the tree to the sawmill etc. I wonder how they do it.

Comments

[katre]

RFID chips are used for inventory control, and are good for that since they are powered by the detector. However, this means they can generally only be read from a few feet away (although some people have managed to reach 20 feet). This means it probably won't be very good for satellite monitoring. Whatever they use will probably be powered. Sounds interesting, I hope they succeed with it.