As far as possible, all projects will be Open Source. For available products and my consulting services, have a look at the services page. Here follows a list of development projects that I am planning for the future as funding become available. If you have a specific project that you believe should be here, please contact me. If a specific project, catches your eye and you would like to invest either time (on a paid contract basis) or money (for ROI shares) in it, get involved in either a research project, a software development project or a hardware development project. On a smaller scale, you can also organize and sponsor specific training events on holistic predation/farm management or nature camps using me as a guide for less priviledged groups.
Projects could include both for-profit and non-profit, although the two types of projects would be funded separately. The idea is that ultimately the for-profit projects will subsidize the non-profit projects so that New Development would be able to function independently from outside funding sources. Sometimes there are conservation projects that are not charismatic or likely to attrack much funding, but ultimately very important for biodiversity. For-profit projects will enable New Development to eventually contribute to these "less sexy" projects as well.
Current projects
- The Farming with Predators project is basically done. It looked at finding solutions for livestock farmers in Namibia to prevent livestock losses due to predators on their land. Some articles sharing the results still need to be written and published.
- I am contracting to the Cape Leopard Trust for a number of their projects:
- The Mobi-Kraal (a mobile, predator-proof kraal) is being tested on three farms in the Western and Northern Cape..
- Presenting Farming with Nature farmer workshops.
- Responding to conflict calls from farmers who have lost livestock to predators, together with the Cape Leopard Trust and CapeNature.
- New Development will also be giving training to various conservationists (including CapeNature and Cape Leopard Trust personnel) on predation conflict mitigation.
- As an outflow of the Farming with Predators project, I have written a CyberTracker App, that farmers can use to record livestock losses on their farm. Eventually it can use the information provided by the farmer to determine the best anti-predation method for their farm.
- A Spoor tracking CyberTracker App has also been written for recording tracks, dung or other signs of wildlife with picctures, GPS location, date, time and any other data. A similar CyberTracker app is already used for African Wild Dog research in Botswana.
- New Development is still looking for engineers to partner or contract in developing hardware solutions.
R&D projects in the pipe-line:
- The ecological basis for the Farming with Predators decision model is still based on a lot of uncertain assumption. While it uses a Bayesian Network to deal at least partly with the uncertainty, further research on the ecology of predators on farmlands is required to improve the reliability of the software. This research would be done with partners like the Cape Leopard Trust using post-graduate students from various universities depending on funding. My role will primarily be that of co-supervisor.
- While the Farming with Predators research was done in Namibia and gathered valuable information, similar research has not been done for the Western Cape, with very different farming and ecological environments. I would like to partner with the Cape Leopard Trust and local academic institution(s) to do a comparative survey of Western Cape farmers and increase the quality of mitigation solutions used.
- While there are limitations to where they can be used, Anatolian (and Maluti) Livestock Guarding Dogs is one of the most cost-effective preventative predation conflict mitigation methods. Currently, no breeder in the Western Cape place livestock guarding dogs with farmers together with the required information on training and care of the dogs. There are trusted breeders in the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape, but this is a current gap that still needs to be addressed for the Western Cape. While I am not a dog breeder, I would like to partner with breeders of these dogs to give continued support to farmers who want to use one or more of these dogs to protect their livestock.
- A revolutionary new 3D GUI interface for Linux (possibly ported to MS Windows and the Apple Mac). This project is planned to be an Open Source learning exercise for publicity for New Development. On the other hand, as disruptive technology it could become the future standard desktop interface for all Operating Systems.
- Farm management Software are not widely used by Namibian or South African farmers, except for a few really intensive farming enterprises. This could be either because of the high prices of many software options, a fear by older farmers of computers, or simply because current software does not do what farmers really want. New software that runs on Android smart phones and maybe fit with the existing CyberTracker Predator Management app, could break into this market. This software can be provided as part of our farmer consultancy service with a monthly subscription fee of about R100-00, instead of selling a single software package for a high price, as is usually done now. More market research is required.
- One of the major obstacles in the Farming with Predators project was the lack of affordable technology, specifically GPS collars, for getting spatially behavioural data on the predators. We plan to design an affordable GPS collar costing less than US$1000 that are light enough to fit on small predators like black-backed jackals, and have a long enough battery life for getting at least a year's worth of data. The technology exists already, but needs to be put together into an affordable collar. If the collar is cheap enough, it will open up the market to livestock farmers and pet owners to use it, instead of the current, relatively small, market of researchers. The specs of such a GPS collar can be found here.
- In the short term, and functioning as the "base station" for our GPS collars, we want to develop an airdrone. It should be energy independent (e.g. getting all its energy from solar panels only with no need to charge batteries from another power source), be remote controllable (so that a specific predator can be followed from the air), carry a "pan, tilt, zoom (PTZ) type camera and be able to download and store data from GPS collars. The full specifications for this is still being written.
- A Long-term future development, based on the technology developed for the airdrone, would be a full-sized airship, capable of replacing current aeroplanes through being energy-independent from both fossil fuels and the power grid. Currently, roads and railways are major problems, causing habitat fragmentation, roadkill, artificial increase in scavenging birds because of the roadkill. Affordable, solar-driven transport that does not require roads, could be a major break-through, both in reducing carbon emmisions and mitigating the negative impact on biodiversity.
If any of these projects catches your eye as something in which you would like to be involved (either by sponsoring it financially, investing money or time for a future ROI, as a partner, a student, or as a paid contractor), please contact me
