Optimal Patrol Planning Against Black-Box Attackers

Worldwide, wildlife conservation agencies have established protected areas to protect threatened species from dire levels of poaching. Unfortunately, even in many protected areas, species’ populations are still in decline [Di Marco et al. 2014; Critchlow et al. 2016]. These areas are protected by park rangers who conduct patrols to protect wildlife and deter poaching. Given that these areas are vast, however, agencies do not have sufficient resources to ensure rangers can adequately protect the entire park.At many protected areas, rangers collect observational data while on patrol, and these observations on animals and illegal human activities (eg, poaching, trespassing) are commonly recorded into a park-wide database (eg, SMART, Cybertracker). Once enough patrols have been conducted, a patrol manager will analyze the data and generate a new patrolling strategy to execute. However, given the vast area and limited financial budgets of conservation agencies, improving the efficiency of ranger patrols is an important goal in this domain.