Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at New England Aquarium, Roger Williams University one of four winners internationally
BOSTON – The Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium and Roger Williams University won a prestigious award recently to develop technology that will help port inspectors find illegally hidden wildlife and help stem wildlife trafficking in the U.S. They are one of four grand prize winners to receive the inaugural Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge award from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Aquarium’s Michael Tlusty and Roger Williams’s Andrew Rhyne submitted their proposal to USAID’s Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, which is funding a combined $900,000 to the Aquarium, New York University, University of Washington, and the National Whistleblower Center to design innovative science and technology solutions to combat illegal marine and terrestrial wildlife trafficking. More than 300 groups applied for the award internationally.
“We are delighted to be part of a worldwide effort to develop effective solutions to this growing and widespread problem by developing technology that can stop traffickers at the point of entering our country and causing damage, ecologically and economically,” said Tlusty, who works with Rhyne on aquaculture research and the aquarium fish trade.