There's a stealthy nighttime battle taking place on the African savannah. It's a place where poachers stalk their prey — the animals that graze there. And they, the poachers, are in turn stalked by rangers trying to bring them in. Now those rangers are trying out some new equipment using the kind of technology pioneered by the military. On an evening ride in Kenya's Maasai Mara, park ranger Martine Cheruiyot hoists a 20-pound gray tube and screws it on top of a jeep. It looks a bit like an X-ray machine in a dentist's office. But this giant can read thermal waves — it sees a person's body heat a mile away. Another camouflaged ranger rolls canvas over the windshield to block any light from revealing the jeep's position. Cheruiyot and his colleague David Aruara huddle in the front seat over a gray monitor. Scores of white dots appear on the screen, each dot smaller than the shoe on a Barbie. Even staring at these little dots, I can barely tell an elephant from a zebra. But Cheruiyot can
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