Just when you thought it was safe to stop talking about UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) as something that conservationists and authorities might one day use to stop poachers killing animals and start talking about drones as something actually being used to catch poachers, African governments have started banning them.On 3 June this year reports emerged that the South African Civil Aviation Authority had banned individuals and groups from flying drones with mounted cameras in South African airspace. The SACAA quickly denied this. They said that drones needed to meet certain requirements to fly in South African airspace, it was just that no drones currently met those requirements. The next day, the Kenyan government also banned privately owned drones with cameras.
A few weeks earlier, drones had been banned in the USA’s 58 National Parks. People were using them to take photos, officials said, upsetting wildlife and other park visitors. In March...