South Africa, with its abundant wildlife, suffers from a scourge of poaching that has become a significant challenge in the country's national parks. In particular, the poaching of rhinos for their horns has increased dramatically since 2014, so SA National Parks (SANParks) sought out a system that could enable it to successfully counter this: one that could detect movement - specifically of people - in protected areas. According to Charl Petzer, programme manager for integrated security at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), such crimes can only occur if there is a target, a willing perpetrator and no active guardian, so the CSIR has developed a system to protect the target, identify the perpetrator and direct the guardians to the right place. "To this end, we have developed the Meerkat Wide Area Surveillance System (WASS), which allows SANParks to detect and track poachers over a distance of many kilometres. The system uses a locally developed radar from Reutech Radar Systems to detect poachers day and night, over a wide area, while custom developed long-range optics are used to inspect suspicious movement," he explains.