The illegal wildlife trade is fourth only to narcotics, human and counterfeiting in terms of transnational trafficking and the UN has recognised that such crimes require a greater response by governments. The UK government has further launched a £10 million ‘Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund’ supporting projects tackling illegal wildlife trade. With this background in mind, third year project student Saajan Sujanani from the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, recently developed a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag as part of an alarm system to protect a rare plant species known as Cycads.
The project was supervised by Dr John Batchelor and proposed by Dr David Roberts from the School of Anthropology and Conservation. Dr Roberts is interested in protecting the rare Cycads species, where nearly 40% are threatened with extinction. They can be very valuable, are often stolen, and in some cases, there are only a few specimens of certain species left in the wild.
There are plans to publish the results of this impressive student project and prepare a research proposal to develop it further.