Park managers call for cost-effective and innovative solutions to handle a wide variety of environmental problems that threaten biodiversity in protected areas. Recently, drones have been called upon to revolutionize conservation and hold great potential to evolve and raise better-informed decisions to assist management. Despite great expectations, the benefits that drones could bring to foster effectiveness remain fundamentally unexplored. To address this gap, we performed a literature review about the use of drones in conservation. We selected a total of 256 studies, of which 99 were carried out in protected areas. We classified the studies in five distinct areas of applications: “wildlife monitoring and management”; “ecosystem monitoring”; “law enforcement”; “ecotourism”; and “environmental management and disaster response”. We also identified specific gaps and challenges that would allow for the expansion of critical research or monitoring. Our results support the evidence that drones hold merits to serve conservation actions and reinforce effective management, but multidisciplinary research must resolve the operational and analytical shortcomings that undermine the prospects for drones integration in protected areas.
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Park managers call for cost-effective and innovative solutions to handle a wide variety of environmental problems that threaten biodiversity in protected areas. (~~this first sentence could be made optional~~)
To check whether using drones at nature parks is effective in making well-informed decisions for ecology & conservation purposes, the authors reviewed literature involving 256 studies focused on applications like wildlife monitoring, ecosystem monitoring, law enforcement, ecotourism and environmental management plus disaster response. The study verified that drones do help in better management and effective conservation actions, but using them for multidisciplinary research would be unproductive unless the associated 'operational and analytical shortcomings' aren't resolved.
Park managers call for cost-effective and innovative solutions to handle a wide variety of environmental problems...
We conducted a comprehensive literature search on drones in conservation up to October 2nd 2018, in line with related studies [10,11,35]. All searches were done by the same person in English, mainly using Google Scholar. This was further complemented through reference harvesting, citation tracking, abstracts in conference programs, and author search, using Research Gate and Mendeley (see PRISMA Flowchart in Supplementary Figure S1 Checklist and list of studies reviewed in Table S1). We then removed duplicate and unrelated results. Finally,...
Protected areas aim to safeguard biodiversity, preserve ecosystem services and ensure the persistence of natural heritage [1]. Despite their essential role in conservation, the allocation of resources to cope with an increasing variety of regular activities and unforeseen circumstances remains generally insufficient [2], severely affecting overall effectiveness [3]. Besides, protected areas subjected to international and national agreements must resolve their acquired responsibilities to maintain their legal status [4]. Hence, there is a demand for cost-effective, versatile and practical initiatives to...