"It's another amazing tool," said Tom McPhee, executive director of World Animal Awareness Society.
It's a tool to track stray dogs. WA2S is shooting a new TV show, Operation Houston: Stray Dog City. It's an up-close look at Houston's serious stray dog problem and the men and women who try to save the dogs before it's too late.
Momma is a pit bull found by Emal's group. She was found in an abandoned
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| Tom McPhee |
"If we hadn't found her, she would have died," said Erika Emal, the founder of Southside Street Dogs.
"It's touch and go," said Emal.
She was rushed to a local emergency vet clinic. It's just one of several stories McPhee wants to highlight in Houston.
"There's obviously issues and problems here," said McPhee.
But to solve those issues you need to first know how big the problem is. It's why McPhee plans to launch his drones across Houston.
"The drone allows us to draw a big circle in the air as we're filming in 4K. It's beautiful footage," said McPhee.
He'll use GPS technology and volunteers on the ground. Together they plan to find and count just how many strays are in the Houston area. Estimates indicate it could be more than a million.
"It's a first step to try and tackle a humongous problem," said Emal.
Drones, as low-cost flying machines, make great rescue tools. They can look and go places people can’t--or at least can’t go safely--and with infrared cameras, they can sometimes see beyond what human eyes can. In Houston, the World Animal Awareness Society plans to use them to track stray dogs, combining a drone's utility as a mapping device with its rescue abilities.
However, the project, titled Operation Houston: Stray Dog City,” plans to film not just a stray dog map, but the pilot for a new show. The show started filming on March 20th and will continue filming through the 30th. World Animal Awareness Society is a media nonprofit that's made shows for National Geographic, Animal Planet, and others, though there's no announced broadcast information for Operation Houston yet. As for how the show will be structured, it's billed as a “cross between Pit Bulls & Parolees, Deadliest Catch, and Survivor,” which does not bode terribly well for the pups.
Watch a video of them testing the drone in Detroit below:
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