Here’s Why Drones Don’t Always Deserve the Bad Rap

What do you think of when you hear the word “drone”? An entomologist might be so immersed in the world of insects that a drone will always mean one thing — a stingless male honeybee. To the musician’s ear, drone might imply monotonous music. As a professor, I sincerely hope my students don’t associate drone with my teaching style. For many people, these long-standing and relatively benign uses of the word drone have been supplanted by something that has strongly negative, even terrifying connotations.

While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aka drones, have been around for several decades, their widespread use in warfare is very much a 21st Century phenomenon. In the Middle East, Predator drones have become a potent symbol of US military prowess, ushering a new era of detached warfare, whereby the drone pilots are allegedly too far removed from the consequences of their actions.

If military drones are of the 21st Century, civilian drones are very much of the 2010s. Over the course of just a few years, drones have gone mainstream and recreational drones now number in the millions. Most of us have marveled at aerial videos filmed by drone-mounted cameras — now a tool of the trade for professional and amateur videographers alike. Maybe we groaned a little when we heard that “drone selfies” are now a thing. If we grow tired of the Olympic Games this August we can tune into the National Drone Racing Championships on ESPN! But despite the wow factor of drones, their growing use by untrained civilians is fueling concern. There are now almost daily news reports of the misuse of drones: they invade people’s privacy, they’ve dropped out of the sky onto unsuspecting bystanders, and they have even become a menace to domestic aviation.

So, drones can be terrifying or they can be fun, depending on who is using them and why.

But can drones be a force for good?

The answer to this question is a resounding “yes!” Drones are now being used for disaster relief, search and rescue efforts, inspecting infrastructure, and delivering emergency medical supplies. One of the leading commercial applications of drones is in agriculture. Drones can be used to monitor crop health in real time, which allows the careful targeting of herbicide, pesticide and fertilizer to where and when they are needed. This “precision agriculture” reduces the overall use of agri-chemicals, cutting costs for farmers, and reducing the flow of damaging chemicals into waterways.

In my field of Ecology and Wildlife Conservation, drones have emerged as a powerful new tool for research and monitoring. Cool applications include surveying remote penguin colonies in Antarctica, fighting rampant poaching in Africa, monitoring air pollution, and tracking marine mammals. Drones are great tools for these jobs because they enable us to visit inaccessible or dangerous places, at a fraction of the cost of flying light aircraft. Airplanes are used extensively for monitoring and research of natural resources, but they have constraints: they need access to airports or landing strips, they need to be operated by professional pilots, they use lots of fossil fuels, and shockingly, one study found that aircraft accidents were the leading cause of on-the-job deaths of wildlife biologists. Drones are literally opening up new dimensions in our efforts to understand and protect the natural world.

Unfortunately, the use of drones for non-recreational purposes in the United States has been hampered by a period of legislative uncertainty.

Hopefully, that’s about to change. On August 29, 2016 new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules for piloting and operating small UASs come into effect (to add to the “alphabet soup,” the FAA uses the term Unmanned Aircraft Systems). Non-recreational users must now obtain certification to ensure that they are familiar with UAS rules and general airspace regulations. The new rules include a long list of sensible restrictions — pilots must fly at altitudes of less than 400 feet, only during daylight hours, and keeping the vehicle within line-of-sight.

Lawmakers face a difficult challenge when legislating around the use of new or emerging technology: technological advances can be so rapid that the deliberative process of lawmaking has trouble keeping pace. Further, there is a fine line to be struck between imposing sensible restrictions, and allowing enough freedom for innovation. Thankfully, the FAA rules that go into effect this month provide a sound basis for both commercial interests and researchers to move forward with innovative uses of drones. I’m delighted that my research program studying the potential to use drones to study bird populations can now move forward.

But, I have some reticence about how civilian drones will impact our world. Environmental Scientists are well aware of the IPAT formula: I = PxAxT, where human impact on the environment (I) is a function of population (P), affluence (A), and technology (T). History tells us that technology is more often than not used to enhance our ability to dominate and subsume our environment.

Drone technology is already being used in damaging ways. The Pennsylvania Game Commission recently prohibited the use of drones on 1.5 million acres of public game lands across the state, following numerous incidents of recreational drone users harassing wildlife. As drone numbers continue to rise, so does the potential for drone-wildlife conflicts. We can only hope that the positive uses of drones outweigh the potential for this emerging technology to wreak environmental damage in as yet unforeseen ways.

I worry about a possible near-future in which peace-shattering drones are buzzing around the skies all day long. Some of those drones might be doing important work…but do we need drones to be zipping around delivering pizza and six-packs of beer?