Abstract
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.
Highlights
Protected areas aim to safeguard biodiversity, preserve ecosystem services and ensure the persistence of natural heritage [1]
There is a demand for cost-effective, versatile and practical initiatives to attend a disparity of requirements to guarantee conservation, including a wide range of natural solutions [5], technological advances, and methods or innovative application of existing technologies [6]
Drones have recently become a major trend in wildlife research [10,11] and management [12,13,14]
Summary
Protected areas aim to safeguard biodiversity, preserve ecosystem services and ensure the persistence of natural heritage [1]. The use of drones as tools of coercion could endangered turtles from feral species [24]; monitoring invasive plant species [25]; document illegal weaken environmental commitment of communities in protected areas andlitter may loggingthe and mining [26]; wetland management [27]; anti-poaching [28]; and[36], marine detection prove counterproductive for conservation. Ingenious methods that target particular conservation actions, such as wildfires firefighting [31]; Likewise, connection ofdisease drone advances with the most important features guiding effective whale health the monitoring [32]; vectors control [33]; or seed planting for habitat restoration management has notof yettechnological been weighted and would be necessary to better alignprevious research [34]. Since all shape the feasibility of drones to approach conservation and environmental issues
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