Friday JohnKu – AKA – TGIF – Fri-Yay/GoodNews

~ John W. Howell
Photo India Times

 

Today’s good news story comes from the India Times and was submitted by our overseas reporter, Noelle Granger. Thanks Noelle

Meet Anika Puri, the 17-year-old Indian-American student who built a $300 AI system that spots elephant poachers with over 90% accuracy and won a $25,000 Davidson scholarship.

TOI Science Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM / October 13, 2026, 20:00 IST

When darkness settles over a wildlife reserve, spotting a poacher from hundreds of feet up can be difficult, even with thermal imaging technology. For park rangers protecting endangered animals, a missed movement could have serious consequences. Anika Puri, an Indian-American student from Chappaqua, New York, set out to tackle this challenge with an unlikely combination of artificial intelligence, drone technology, and a closer look at how humans and animals move. According to a Society for Science report, her project, ElSa (short for Elephant-Savior), developed a low-cost system to identify potential poachers in nighttime drone footage. The innovation earned Puri a $25,000 scholarship as a 2022 Davidson Fellow, recognizing her engineering work and its potential application to wildlife conservation. Scroll down to read more about her journey. Turning curiosity into innovation. According to a Davidson Institute online release, Puri’s interest in technology grew from an early fascination with building, experimenting, and exploring new ideas.

From presenting a Lego Mindstorms robot at Maker Faire to developing an interest in drones and earning a commercial drone pilot license, she approached engineering as a way to turn curiosity into practical solutions. Her focus eventually shifted to environmental science and protecting endangered species. During visits to India, she was struck by the continued presence of ivory jewelry and statues in Mumbai markets, despite international efforts to curb the illegal ivory trade. The experience prompted her to investigate the scale of wildlife poaching and the technology being used to prevent it.

She discovered that drones equipped with thermal infrared cameras were already helping rangers monitor protected areas after dark. However, analyzing the resulting footage remained a challenge, the release explains.

Why traditional detection falls short

Drones monitoring wildlife reserves typically fly at considerable heights to cover large areas while working within limited battery life. At around 400 feet, people and animals can appear as small shapes in thermal images, making them difficult to distinguish accurately, the online release states. Existing detection systems often rely on analyzing individual frames and identifying objects by their shape. According to Puri’s research, these approaches could achieve accuracy as low as 20% in challenging conditions. Human operators watching hours of footage also risk fatigue and missing activity.

Puri approached the problem from a different angle. Instead of examining only what appeared in an image, she studied how objects moved over time. Reading movement through AI. The ElSa system uses machine learning to analyze spatio-temporal patterns in nighttime thermal infrared videos. These patterns include differences in speed, turning radius, and movement behavior, as well as whether an animal moves as part of a herd, adds the Society for Science report. By examining these characteristics across successive video frames, the algorithm aims to distinguish humans from animals more reliably than methods based primarily on static images.

When tested on the BIRDSAI thermal infrared video dataset, collected from four national parks in Africa, the system achieved 90.9% accuracy in detecting humans. The result represented roughly a fourfold improvement over the existing methods cited in her research. Although identifying a human does not automatically establish that the person is a poacher, the technology could help rangers flag suspicious activity for further investigation. Making conservation technology affordable.

Cost was another central consideration in Puri’s design. High-resolution thermal cameras can cost about $4,800, putting advanced surveillance technology out of reach for some conservation programs. Her ElSa prototype, built using commercially available components, cost around $300. This significantly lower price point could make automated detection tools more accessible to parks in Africa and Asia, where budgets and resources are often limited.

The project offers a glimpse of how artificial intelligence can be applied beyond conventional commercial uses, addressing challenges that affect biodiversity and environmental sustainability.

A young researcher with a larger purpose

For Puri, the Davidson Fellowship recognized a project that connected engineering to a cause she cared deeply about. Her work demonstrates how looking at a familiar problem differently can open up new technological possibilities. Wildlife protection requires trained rangers, effective enforcement, community participation, and reliable monitoring. ElSa is not a substitute for those efforts. Still, it points towards a future in which affordable AI tools could help conservation teams identify threats faster and direct their limited resources more effectively. Images Courtesy: Society for Science

The good news here is a young person took the initiative to improve existing technology. Today’s JohnKu talks about Initiative. I hope you have a super weekend.

Go by John W. Howell © 2026

Just because it’s there,

Doesn’t mean it works that well . . .

Let’s try something new.

 

 

85 thoughts on “Friday JohnKu – AKA – TGIF – Fri-Yay/GoodNews”

  3. Very good story John. It drives me crazy when I read about poachers. They prey on a defenseless animal for profit. Totally 100% wrong. If-when they are caught cutting off tusks, we should cut off something of theirs

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  5. It’s great to read a piece about a good and useful way to use AI. It’s also good to see your theme change. It looked familiar, and I discovered that I’m using the Penscratch theme, while you’re using Penscratch 2 now. I’ve pondered changing themes so that I could use some block editing tools that aren’t available to me now, and I’ve thought about Penscratch 2, wondering if it would do. Now I can see it in action!

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    1. I still have some problems with it. When I set a featured image, it appears in the post, so the post has a duplicate. My old theme used the featured image only on social media. Still having trouble with the light font color. The bot suggested this theme, but it doesn’t let me change the font. Their solution: Go to another theme. Not sure I want to do that.

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      1. I’ve changed the text color in my font through the block editor. I can change text size, too. Let me see if I can figure out how to get to the place where those changes (and image size and choice) are available.

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        1. For me, in the block editor I highlight text, and then can change size or color from the right sidebar. I was told that for Penscratch 2 it would be possible to change the color for an entire post, rather than block by block as I have to do it.

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        3. I think they’ve changed the procedure since I learned it. Now, if I’m in the block editor and highlight a paragraph block, the color and text size choice windows appear in the right sidebar. It looks like a step has been eliminated.

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  6. Excellent commentary on youth and the promise they hold for our future. It’s interesting to note that the subject is from Chappaqua, NY, a well-to-do suburb of metropolitan NYC, the residence of the Clintons. Like many affluent suburbs, educational resources abound that support these young intelligent and highly motivated students.

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  9. Love that this clever young woman is using affordable technology to help environmental science in protecting endangered species. Thanks for sharing, John. Another great success story. Kudos to Ms. Puri. I hope her successes continue as she makes a difference in this world.

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  13. It’s great that Anika Puri, a 17-year-old Indian-American student invented a drone that could distinctly identify elephant poachers, and that you posted about it, John. She deserved the award she got, and your post deserves the comment.

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  14. A real life problem solver. I remember how tough it was in the past with poachers. There was a time when poachers cum smugglers (specially chandan wood) had become a social menace and how tough it was to track them down. They would attack on authorities. Once a poacher was encountered by authorities, who became such a dangerous person, was a national news for weeks. This effort by this young girl is commendable and what a good news. The headline should be ‘From Veerappan to AI poacher tracking’.

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  19. Anika Puri is certainly a creative and smart young woman. This is excellent use of AI technology and congratulations to her for the price she won. Incidentally, I recently met a you Indian boy who use a camera, a robotic arm, and AI to sort recycling items in the right bin. There are a lot of creative young people.

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  23. Yes, as the JohnKu says, try something new.

    It seems to me the young people who have been born into tech are really picking up the torch. I’m so thrilled with a lot of what youth is up to.

    Great good news. Thanks John!

    🎃𝖃 🎃𝖃 🎃𝖃

    (Sticking with the Halloween OXen theme AND your new theme is gorgeous. So clean!)

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