Monitoring | PANORAMA

Capacity building and innovative technology

SMART technology training for rangers

Save the Rhino Trust

Rangers are trained on the use of new SMART technology used to record patrol data. It is crucial to have well trained and equipped ranger teams to collect accurate data during their patrols.

Availability of funds
Access to technology and training of staff in using the technology

Individual rangers have different capacity building needs, we identified that there is a need to focus on individual rangers as well rather than just providing group training.
Peer-to-peer learning and training is useful

Building relations and trust with local actors

Issues of poisoning are sometimes sensitive and people might be reluctant to share much-needed information. To gain their trust, the implementer approached the local government authority and signed a Memorandum of Understanding which enables us to work in the area. Another engagement meeting was done with the local leadership (chiefs, headman) to discuss our intention in the area as a conservation organization. These steps increased our transparency as an honest organization. Building on these strong relations and trust with local communities is essential to ensure that they share such information.

Time and the human capacity for repeated visits to spend time in the communities to build long-standing relationships of trust over time were enabling factors.

Long-term investments with communities are needed, taking into recognition that they have different cultural and social issues happening in the communities. Effective communication is essential to build the trust of the local communities.

Documentation and dissemination of results

Engaging key stakeholders

Stakeholder meeting during conservancy visit

Save the Rhino Trust

Since inception in 1982 we have built strong relationships with local communities, conservation NGOs, Ministry of Environment, forestry & Tourism and Traditional leaders in the rhino landscape.

Our work benefits the local communities through the creation of job opportunities as trackers and rhino rangers. By creating a healthy environment for rhino population growth, we have enabled custodian conservancies to sign agreements with tourism partners, this creates job opportunities in the community and additional income for the conservancies as tourism is the highest income generating industry for the majority of these conservancies.

Constituted communal conservancies, with clear standard operating procedures and constitutions.
Management agreements between tourism Joint Venture (JV) partners and custodianship agreements between the conservancies and the government.
Strong partnerships with other conservation NGO’s in the landscape

Conservation is a success when all stakeholders are equally engaged
Local knowledge is essential and can be a good guidance in decision making
Engagement enables us to identify and agree on areas of need and improvement

How black rhinos and local communities help each other in Namibia (mongabay.com)

Prior Assessments to Identify Capacity Gaps

SAPA Assessment - Public Participation with Local Community

WWF-Kenya

SAPA Assessment - Public Participation with Local Institutions

WWF-Kenya

While the WIO-COMPAS programme aims at improving the individual capacity of MPA professionals, it also has a compounding effect on the management effectiveness of an MPA. Therefore, a prior assessment on the different aspects of MPA management effectiveness is necessary for monitoring, evaluation, learning and adaptive management purposes.

It is thus recommended that the MPA implementing this process commences with at least one of the following assessments

Integrated Management Effectiveness Tool (IMET) or Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT)
Social Assessment for Protected Areas (SAPA)

Combined, these highlight gaps in the different aspects of an MPA, including management, governance, ecological health, and social wellbeing. These gaps can be used to tailor the WIO-COMPAS training programme towards addressing the gaps identified.

Institutional Recognition and Support: The institution managing the MPA must see the necessity of assessing the management status of MPAs. This will ensure appropriate funding allocation in the long term to facilitate the continual capacity growth of the MPA.

Capacity to Conduct the Assessments: Internal capacity is desired to reduce costs. However, external expertise may be sourced where necessary where capacity is lacking. This may include working with partner institutions on a pro bono basis or using a consultant to conduct the entire assessment.

Prior planning: It is necessary to consider the entire process beforehand. This includes identifying the expertise/personnel needed, the duration for the exercise, and any costs associated with it. Additionally, it is important to allocate specific tasks to the individual assessment team members to ensure the objectives of the exercise are fully met in good time.

Public participation: Engaging the MPA staff alone in the assessments leads to positively skewed results. Consequently, it is necessary to acquire views from other stakeholders as well to get a more holistic picture of the management gaps that the MPA is facing. It will therefore be necessary to map out stakeholders, including their influence and interests in the MPA, before the assessments.

Use of advanced technology

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Representation of the areas covered by the drone patrols. Three main take of spots where used (represented with a drone icon), used to cover a long area of more than km. In orange the flightpath in the MPA of Murdeira, in green the MPA of Costa Fragata an

C:\Users\artur\Documents\Biopama\drone

Use of advanced drone technology with thermal and infra-red imaging allows greater capture of infractions within the targeted areas, as well as the ability to travel further distances for longer time. This technology allows greater distances to be covered with less resources required, for example, more isolated nesting beaches that would require a larger team of people for security reasons, or more complex logistics in locating teams to those beaches.

Intensive training, or recruitment of a qualified person(s), to use this advanced technology is essential. In this case the drone pilots had previous experience in night flights using thermal imaging so were able to quickly learn how best to use and understand the new infra-red camera imaging. It is also essential that the persons have knowledge of the target area and experience in navigating within the area, both via drone and by vehicle.

Advanced technology is useful in itself but is much more effective when partnered with conservative techniques. In this case, whilst the drone patrol was effective in covering a large area, quickly, it was unable to fly over the full time period (all night). Therefore, when combined with foot patrols, it enhanced coverage within the MPA and allowed for greater protection withing the MPA and it’s surrounding isolated beaches. It is also important to consider that whilst the drone could quickly and easily reach isolated areas, when infractions were discovered, the response of the suitable people (either foot patrols or authorities) was much slower, allowing for poachers to escape being detained. Whilst effective for deterrent of poaching, which was an advantage in this case, for other contexts this may be a strong factor in planning the strategy.

Monitoring

Local

Building up: Implementation and Monitoring—role of self-analysis, fundraising and tools

Implementation is the desire of any plan. It is the “boots on the ground” that counts. A portion of the equation is developing a protected area enforcement plan. Equally important is the capacity to implement. To determine ability to implement, an organization must carry out a self-analysis. The plan can outline fundraising needs: capacity needs, equipment and tools. Additionally, an organization can have a buildup period for implementation showing donors the full picture of desired impact.

Adequate financing and resources are needed for implementation and monitoring. If you have these then tracking and monitoring provides the results needed to show the benefit of an enforcement plan.

The enforcement strategy is a plan, implementation is determined by other factors such as resources. The plan can be a fundraising tool as it clearly outlines desired state and needs.

Implementation

Monitoring

Documentation and dissemination of results

Local

National

Adopting and adaption

Interacting with local chief

Francis Sakala

community meeting

Francis Sakala

This process involved peer-to-peer learning among the different sites of the project beneficiaries, to learn from one another, adopt some good governance practices and adapt to their local situations such as how to structure good benefit-sharing mechanisms.

The beneficiary communities shared similar governance challenges, and sometimes the same landscape and were familiar with common issues. Through sharing of the lessons at the various sites and joint implementation and peer-to-peer interaction were an important part to share the success stories and challenges.

Governance challenges are similar across sites in Zambia and require enacting national policies and legislation to support efficient community-led conservation. Community based natural resources management approaches are crucial to successful management of protected areas.

Implementation

Monitoring

Documentation and dissemination of results

Local

Subnational

Information booklet Luano GMA

Project blog

Action Planning, communicating, and support.

Action planning meeting

Francis Sakala

This building block assisted in developing actions to address the governance challenges, communication of information, training, and ensuring ongoing mentorship and coaching for the Community Resources Boards in the implementation of governance actions. The key issue of this stage was creating opportunities for having a shared vision and collective actions.

Good stakeholder participation, and support by the government and the traditional leadership. The participatory nature of the tool allows broader collective action planning and assessment.

It requires proper planning and identification of key governance issues to be analyzed and acted upon. Usually, you would want to focus on relevant governance issues such as gender equity, participation, and information sharing.

Information booklet Luano GMA

Project blog

Collaboration

Blue Parks relies heavily on collaborations with other conservation NGOs, communications and marketing professionals, government leaders, MPA managers, scientists, and local ocean champions. Growing the network of Blue Parks and amplifying the Blue Park standard for conservation effectiveness requires many partners.

Blue Parks has benefitted from the contributions of many partners. These collaborations have been made possible by a growing awareness that MPA coverage alone is not sufficient to safeguard biodiversity -- that we need to fully implement high quality MPAs in order to see conservation outcomes, and most MPAs are not yet well implemented.

These collaborations have also grown out of Marine Conservation Institute's long-standing history as a trusted partner among marine scientists, conservation organizations, and governments.

Nurturing collaborations across multiple sectors (government, NGO, academia) requires clear communication. We have found that regular, though not too frequent, outreach and communication with these partners keeps the collaborations active, and that these communications are most effective when they are designed for the audience, so we often send separate communications to partners in different sectors.

Documentation and dissemination of results

Sustainable management of forest resources

Training on bush fire controlling

@giz

Bush fire danger index sign board

@giz

Training in forest monitoring

@giz

Logging of trees in natural forests for charcoal and fire-wood production is mostly unregulated and not monitored in Ghana. This leads to overexploitation and unsustainable forest management. The implementation of an inventory and monitoring system which based on communities’ needs is key to achieve sustainable forest management.

Community forest management plans were developed which integrate the sustainable management of the project restoration and energy wood plantation sites, but also the protection of selected zones like e.g. river buffers and general management of the forest resources. Regular uncontrolled bushfires destroy upcoming natural regeneration and planted tree seedlings. A bush fire management system was therefore integrated in the plans as well and supported by the training of fire volunteers in patrolling and suppression of uncontrolled fires

Communities and charcoal producers need to be well integrated in the development of a forest monitoring and management system. Beside that it needs to be supported by the local authorities to determine, for example the sustainable volume of wood which can be annually harvested and to select zones and tree species which should be protected from logging. For a functionable bush fire management it is key that especially farmers and herdsman are aware about the risks and damages uncontrolled fires can cause and how they can control them.