Amur Leopard by Linda Wright

Many cameras and smartphones now come equipped with a GPS sensor which broadcasts the precise location of the device. A brilliantly conceived piece of work, and useful in all sorts of ways.

Except one.

If you use your GPS-enabled camera to shoot wildlife — you could be helping poachers to shoot wildlife.

All they have to do is check the EXIF data in your image and they’ll see the precise coördinates of the camera when the photograph was taken. Then they pitch up at the site, and shortly afterwards the last remaining black rhino will wander past. Bang.

At fotoLibra we don’t like this. So we’ve made the decision to strip the GPS data from every wildlife photograph in our library.

That’s 13,878 images which poachers won’t be able to use to track down and slaughter animals.

It’s a small step. But we hope other image collections will follow.