Conservation Drones!.

The mission of this website is to share our knowledge for building low-cost Conservation Drones to help conservation workers and researchers in developing countries do their jobs a lot more effectively and cost efficiently.

Of course, we recognize that there are highly sophisticated commercial UAV systems in the market and in use by the military, agricultural industry, and even the film industry. But most of them cost tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, we choose to adapt an autopilot system developed by an online community of hobbyists and developers (diydrones.com) to build our Conservation Drones.

Our emphasis is on low-cost. The challenge we give ourselves is to build drones that cost no more than a decent pair of field binoculars. These drones could also potentially be adapted for other environmental applications.

This project is partly supported by the National Geographic Society, The Orangutan Conservancy, Philadelphia Zoo, and the Denver Zoo.