(intense music)
- [Park Ranger] We learn how to live with these animals
and to protect them.
That's forced us to being in love with these animals.
We protect them all from our heart.
That's why, when we are here, we feel free.
But we know we put ourself in danger.
- [Werner Vogels] Our planet, and our civilizations
are changing faster than ever before.
Join me, as I travel the globe, talking to start-up founders
using technologies to make our world more interesting,
accessible, and livable.
These are the entrepreneurs that are creating the future
we will live in.
This is Now Go Build.
(upbeat drum music)
The natural world is in trouble.
Wildlife populations around the world
have declined more than 60% in just the last 40 years.
And recent research tells us that a staggering
one million species are at the risk of extinction
in the next few decades.
Nature is fundamental to the development of human society.
The conservation of our natural world
isn't just a nice thought.
It is an imperative.
Our ability to grow a healthy, economically
and socially sound world demands that we live
in a balanced ecosystem.
It is because of technology and science
that we've been able to pinpoint our need
for the natural world.
And the human pressures that are affecting it.
It is science, technology, and education
that will bring us back into balance.
South Africa is home to some of the most diverse ecosystems
on the planet.
I traveled a few hours north of Cape Town
to the Aquila Nature Reserve to visit Africam's founder,
Paul Penzhorn, and to learn more about his vision
to connect all of us to the natural world.
- Hi Werner, my name's Paul.
- Hey Paul, how you doin'?
- Nice to meet you. - Pleasure.
- You have a good trip? - Absolutely, yeah,
it was good. - Great.
Let's go on safari, and go find some animals.
- So Paul, tell us a bit about, what is Africam?
- Africam is, essentially,
it's a network of live streaming cameras
that we put at waterholes strategically around Africa.
What we really wanna do is try and connect people
from around the world to the wild animals of Africa.
- But what's the motivation behind it?
So why are you doing this, is this purely some TV show?
- From being involved with Africam,
we've seen the power that the emotional connection
to animals can have for conservation, for education.
And part of the process has actually been
trying to find out where exactly we sort of fit in.
- Live streaming is very different from edited
pre-programming content.
I mean it must be an important part of
say, validating the efforts of the NGOs.
- For sure.
People trust live 'cause you can't manipulate it.
So when it comes to raising awareness and funding,
we found that live streaming is way more effective.
And again I go back to the fact that
60% of people donate once they've watched the live stream.
And that percentage is under 10% if they watched a video.
That's purely because live is unscripted.
And it's trusted.
The old business model was money going to hierarchy NGOs
who would then feed down to the grassroot NGOs.
But because of poaching, there's been an explosion
of the grassroot NGOs.
So there's just not enough funding.
So what we really try to do is just enable
the funding to go directly to the NGOs
because times have changed.
You're kinda seen as a bit of a shady person
if you're making money out of conservation.
- But the affect that the poachers are
a complete commercial outfit.
NGOs actually need a commercial model for them to compete.
- It's awkward to see that many people don't believe that
non-profits can go very well hand in hand
with a commercial model.
That's what you need to be a built, sustainable business.
- This is a typical example of a camera that we use.
And in fact, this is a typical example of a sort of location
that we would choose.
It's normally a waterhole that's high traffic
where the animals can come to drink.
- Where do you mount it, do you put it in a tree,
or you have a rack for it?
- We try to create different user experiences, so
where there's a hide at the waterhole, we put it on the hide
so that the user experience is that you're sitting in a hide
looking at the animals.
We've got another one called cat's eye,
where the whole idea is that it's at the level
of the animals,
so when the animals come down to the waterhole,
you're at their eye level,
so it just creates a different user experience.
But a big factor is just to try and keep it away
from the animals.
Your two main enemies are the elephants and the baboons.
The elephants come, and if they get upset by the camera
and by the movement and the noise,
they'll just come and destroy it.
So often we put rocks around the installations,
which you'll see.
And for the baboons, we just make sure
that everything's protected and covered
because they have a knack for coming
and destroying things as well.
This is another one of our installations
on the Naledi Game Lodge.
It sits right on the banks of the Olifants River.
It's one of our most popular cameras,
purely because it's very remote.
That does sort of make certain challenges,
but we've now set up an infrastructure
where we can beam out live HD footage
using point-to-point radios.
Beam it onto the top of a hill called Morekiscorp.
And down into a town called Hoedspruit.
From there, we go onto the fiber,
and straight into AWS' servers.
- So the cameras are also remote controlled?
It's not just a one-way thing is it?
- No, and this is the amazing part.
Africam's got a global community of people
who just wanna help.
So we've got a group of people called Zoomies.
And they operate the cameras 24/7,
and they move them if there's any sighting.
They press a button, and you get an alert,
you can either get it by email, via social media
or onto your iPhone.
You can swipe and start streaming and watching,
watch the sighting.
When the sighting's finished, they press stop.
And it cuts a video highlights,
and that goes onto our website,
or it can be sent to you daily as well.
And they do it out of the kindness of their hearts,
and we're extremely lucky with this community,
and they help us out tremendously.
- Okay.
So once an animal comes online, let's say there's a leopard.
At a rare waterhole.
What's the typical explosion of viewers that you get?
- In South Africa, we talk about something bush telegraph.
How the word gets around.
And bush telegraph also works online,
so if a lion or leopard come on, we send out the alert file.
But we see huge spikes in traffic,
we'll get tens of thousands of people coming online.
And the cameras have evolved hugely
over the last three years.
The camera technology has allowed us,
with the streaming algorithms have improved,
the compression algorithms,
to really stream full HD from the bush
to any device around the world.
But also with the advancement with infrared.
We've, up to 50 meters away, you can see the vein
on a leopard while it's drinking at a waterhole,
which is amazing.
And that's the kind of quality that we need to deliver
to a global audience for people really
to get that feeling and make that connection.
One thing we really focus on is the sound.
Because sound is actually of the biggest senses
that transports you somewhere.
So we get a lot of people in America who
put the sound through their sound system
and put the TV up.
And it's a great experience.
And we used to run video ads every five minutes.
And people turned the sound up,
and they're listening to the calls of the wild,
and the next thing this commercial for soap comes on,
and I get about a thousand emails, people complaining,
so we've taken those away.
But for us, Africam's just really a sensory experience.
- Paul has traveled all over South Africa,
speaking to NGOs and private nature preserves.
As he tried to get a grasp on the needs
that conservationists have.
From animal rehabilitation preserves, like SanWild
to the anti-poaching units like the Black Mambas.
Where are we losing the battle, and how do we win?
- 'Cause the poachers are really high tech these days,
you're saying?
- Yeah, and it's a very, very well oiled syndicate,
the poaching industry.
They know exactly what to do,
when and how to do it.
I would say almost military skill-like, really.
The people you find on the ground doing the poaching,
it's only the bottom line of the pyramid.
It's being well structured and delegated from above.
So they're actually guys just doing their job.
- So surely the education of people's quite important,
to go that, this is the livelihood of a lot of people
in the area.
- Yeah, but on the other hand,
it's such a lucrative market for them.
You can make X amount of money for a night's work.
And that will sometimes be more than you can make
in a year's time.
Usually what they do,
they will try to see the pattern they use on the farm,
movement wise.
That's where we can change the game.
There mustn't be a routine visible for them
from the outside.
Because they do scouting.
They see you first, there will be shots fired.
It's a full blown war.
It's a war.
- [Werner] On their side of the war,
poachers are using technologies as a weapon.
Deploying advanced optics and tracking technology
to hunt down prey.
And as the age old poaching industry modernizes,
so must Africam.
By leveraging everything, from machine learning algorithms,
streaming HD cameras running image recognition,
and even blockchain technologies.
Paul is looking to raise awareness
and deepen the connection to these animals.
In order to dismantle the economics of poaching.
The poaching seems to be a major problem.
- Yeah, poaching's been driven by demand.
And there's been many attempts to stop it.
Personally, I don't think there's a silver bullet.
This process is gonna take a generation.
It's gonna start with the education.
Up to 30% of the community's employed by the lodgers.
And once those animals go, there's no employment.
- We know mostly about poaching about rhinos and elephants,
for the horns and the tusks.
But apparently there's a lot of poaching going on
for food as well?
- Exactly.
And I think, again from the research we've done,
you've gotta put yourself in their shoes.
If someone's hungry and there's no jobs,
you're gonna go and poach for food.
And one animal can last you a month.
So as much as you wanna try and stop the poachers
and catch them, it's not solving the problem.
We wanna try and find a way that we can create jobs.
Or just an income into those communities.
And if you can do that,
you're solving the problem at the source.
We spent some time with the Black Mambas,
and speaking to them, the people on the ground know
what the problems are.
- The Black Mambas Anti Poaching unit,
it's 33 young women.
They come from local communities
in the Kruger National Park.
So Black Mambas Anti Poaching unit
is the women who go inside the bush to protect our wildlife.
They don't carry guns because we don't wanna take a life.
We here to protect life of wild animals.
And on the other hand, we are here to protect
life of human beings.
We are the eyes and the ears of the reserves.
When we go out to patrol, we have our walkie talkie radio,
and then we have our smart phone.
If we see rhinos, we take pictures,
so we know where to patrol at night.
If we find holes under the fence, we close the holes.
- But what's bigger,
is they're actually going to the community.
And they're going to the schools,
and they talk to the girls.
And say, there is another option for you.
- People in our communities,
they believe that wildlife, it's for white people,
while it's totally wrong.
Wildlife, it's for all of us.
We go to schools to teach young children about nature.
When they go home, these kids, they educate their parents.
- So Africam basically connects people up
who want to donate to groups like Black Mambas,
and so you basically,
are the platform for exposing what they do?
- Exactly.
What we wanna do is, we've got NGOs on the ground,
doing great work with a great story.
Millions of people who wanna help, but don't know the story.
So we really just wanna connect the two.
And Millennials have just overtaken the Baby Boomers
as the largest group, or demographic, of donors.
And Millennials have grown up where
they wanna go directly to the source.
So they expect that when they give to NGOs as well.
What we wanna do by telling the story of the NGO,
and using blockchain to show where your money's going.
So an NGO has very defined needs.
They need petrol, they need drones, they need equipment.
Very defined things where the funding will go.
And by using blockchain, and creating a community,
we create trust.
If we can be the tool, the platform,
to get that funding to these NGOs,
we think that that is the solution
of making conservation sustainable.
- We need to talk to you about the big five,
but there must be an interest in
a much broader set of animals?
- As a side thing, we get a lot of birders contact us.
And we've seen a huge demand for people to using AI,
identify the birds at the waterholes.
So we've actually been talking to Amazon's engineers
and we're really trying to develop a way to
at every single waterhole,
isolate the bird calls, and put little bubbles up,
actually showing which birds they are.
And birders test themselves.
You can go through a process
where you can listen to the feed.
You can try and guess what the birds are,
then you can test your knowledge.
It almost becomes like a learning tool.
And these are all suggestions we've been getting
from birders around the world.
- It's interesting because I think
quite a few technologies that we have at Amazon
have really demonstrated these audio-video streams
are no longer things to only be listened or watched,
they become data streams to become analyzed.
- You can almost create a wiki on each animal,
but it's done by AI.
'Cause we wanna, education is one of the big pillars
that we wanna push.
And I'm sure by using AI, if we can identify the animals
on the camera,
an elephant could walk into one of our cameras,
and it could say, it's a big tusker, his name's Ernie.
These are his last sightings, this is all the years.
And it really, again it engages the user.
So I think that could work really really well.
- Using AI in many different places
to augment user experience, to identify animals
and things like that,
is there also a role for AI to actually help
the anti-poaching unit?
- For sure.
If you look at the way technology,
especially hardware's going,
at the end of the day,
the poacher and the anti-poaching people
are gonna have the same hardware,
so the real difference is gonna be the AI.
You need to be one step ahead of them.
We went to the Black Mambas
and some other anti-poaching units,
and the one thing that they told us
is they never do the same route twice.
So that the poachers can't see their routine.
But they never know whether the route they are doing
is effective.
So if you can know the movement of the animals,
bring in other factors like the climate and the weather,
AI could start predicting their movements,
which then makes the anti-poaching's movements
and patrols more effective.
- How do you prevent the poachers
actually take the same approach?
Or get access to the data that you have?
- It has to be encrypted.
Even with the pictures that rangers take.
You have to strip off the GPS coordinates
and things like that.
That's where encryption and putting things into the Cloud
becomes vitally important.
This war against poaching
is not gonna be won with the hardware.
It's gonna be won in the Cloud.
(happy music)
- [Werner] At a point in history,
where we've largely disconnected ourselves
from the natural world,
technologists like Paul plan to put us back in.
Currently, an immoral and illegal trade
in wild animal parks is driving
some of the most majestic creatures on the planet
into extinction.
Paul wants to bring everyone to the bush.
Leveraging a set of straightforward,
yet powerful technologies.
He wants to put us next to the elephant, the leopards,
and the rhino.
He wants the market to demand that the natural world lives.
He wants us to demand it.
It's just that, a simple problem of supply and demand.
If Paul can connect us to these animals and their habitat,
our demand that they be preserved
would hopefully get louder than the criminals,
who buy rhino horn, lion skeletons, and elephant ivory
on the black market.
To see the plight of the natural world as our own.
That we need it to thrive.
To reconnect to that truth.
That is what Africam hopes to achieve.