Sateliot has secured a new partnership with EWT (Endangered Wildlife Trust), a South African NGO to safeguard vultures in the region. The collaboration aims to deploy 5G IoT sensors on vultures. Illegal trade has seen thousands of vultures poisoned across Africa, devastating populations, and driving them toward extinction in the wild. Scavenging mammals, including lions, hyaenas, and leopards, are also severely impacted by poisoning. The two companies announced the deal on Feb. 7.

For Sateliot, a company that operates a LEO 5G IoT satellite constellation, this is an interesting collaboration. To address this ominous threat in southern and east Africa, the EWT has harnessed the natural sentinel and foraging behavior of vultures to its advantage and coupled this with novel GPS-tracking technology; developing a rapid poisoning detection system, which it calls ‘Eye in the Sky’. This system closely monitors the behavioral signatures in GPS-tracked vultures to remotely detect the presence of poison sources and feeding events associated with potentially poisoned-laced carcasses.

Using this rapid detection system, the EWT has already started to reduce the impact of wildlife poisoning in southern Africa significantly. In the past year, this system has successfully identified 15 poisoning events. The quick response allowed teams to rescue over 100 highly threatened vultures, swiftly eliminate the poison sources, and decontaminate the scenes.

“Sateliot’s support will significantly impact our organization. This financial relief will enable us to allocate these funds to other critical conservation work. Beyond the monetary savings, partnering with Sateliot will also spare us some time and effort spent on fundraising, allowing us to invest that time in on-the-ground conservation activities,” Alison Janicke, EWT’s head of business development, said in a statement.