India Deploys Drones —to Protect Rhinos

Problem: Poachers are killing more and more protected rhinos in India's Kaziranga national park, and the sanctuary is too massive to effectively patrol on the ground. Solution: Drones. Officials in the state of Assam plan to deploy the aircraft—presumably the inexpensive, unmanned variety—to help save their one-horned rhinos, reports the Wall Street Journal. Park rangers also now have automatic weapons and the authority to kill poachers in the line of duty, a development that has alarmed human rights groups but has the rangers sounding defiant.

"I'm not answerable to anyone to protect the rhinos," says one ranger recently involved in a shootout that left two poachers dead. "I will not let anyone harm them." (More drones stories.)