Dutch Police use an eagle to down drones

This isn’t the first of the solutions we’ve seen to the problem of enforcing drone regulations, which have included literal sky nets, but it looks pretty effective.

The Dutch National Police has made a decision to take a rather unusual approach to capturing rogue drones.

This method, developed by a group called Guard From Above, would most definitely be illegal in the U.S. But eagles in the wild have shown a natural inclination to attack drones on sight (as have hawks and chimps).

As quadcopters and other remote controlled flying devices becomes more popular-and laws against them become more restrictive-law enforcement is left with the challenge of taking increasingly large numbers of law-breaking drones out of the sky.

Police said the program trains the birds to see the drone as prey, so it naturally takes it away to a safe place where there are no other birds or people. The bird swoops down on the drone in midair, snatching it between its talons and then carrying it to a corner of the facility where it lands. It doesn’t make it clear though how unsafe this can prove for the birds since drones do have rotating blades which can prove to be potentially harmful to the birds.

That’s why the police are apparently looking into some sort of protective clothing for the birds.

‘Everyone can get hold of a drone, and that includes people who want to misuse them, ‘ police spokesman Michel Baeten told Nos.