On October 4, Eric Dinerstein, Ph.D., director of WildTech and the Biodiversity and Wildlife Solutions Program at RESOLVE, was honored with the Benton H. Box Award by Clemson’s Institute for Parks and Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management (PRTM) department for his work on TrailGuard AI. Robert Baldwin, Ph.D., and Jeremy Dertien, Ph.D., at Clemson University have worked with Dinerstein over the past several years to develop TrailGuard AI, the artificially intelligent trail camera system that can detect and send images of wild tigers in real time. They successfully deployed it in the Indian forest this summer. The first images were collected and released to the public on International Tiger Day, July 29 (click here to read the press release).
The Benton H. Box Award recognizes academic professionals that exemplify Dr. Box’s distinguished career as an educator and administrator.
For much of the past 25 years, Dinerstein was Chief Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund. Beginning in 1975, he conducted pioneering studies of tigers and their prey and led conservation programs for large mammals, such as greater-one horned rhinoceros and Asiatic elephants. Along with Eric Wikramanayake, Ph.D., Dinerstein mapped tiger conservation landscapes, designed the Terai Arc Landscape in Nepal and India, and came up with the idea of a Global Tiger Summit, staged in November 2010, to double the wild tiger population. He helped create the conservation plans for many iconic places–including the Galapagos, the Chihuahuan Desert, the Himalayas, the panda mountains of China, and the northern Great Plains of Montana. He has conservation experience in many countries and has published widely on large mammal conservation including books on rhinos and tigers.
Click here to learn more about the George B. Hartzog, Jr. Awards & Lecture Series at Clemson University.
