Camera traps have revolutionized wildlife research and conservation, enabling scientists to collect photographic evidence of rarely seen and often globally endangered species, with little expense, relative ease, and minimal disturbance to wildlife. We use them to document wildlife presence, abundance, and population changes, particularly in the face of habitat loss and poaching.
Camera traps are also used to raise conservation awareness worldwide, as a way of reaching out to the public through the internet and social media.
Funding for the equipment, and having staff trained and enthusiastic to use them are critical. Also, the support and approval of the government are essential, especially since camera traps can be “weaponized” against researchers themselves when suddenly they are considered tools for spying.
It is key to have government's support and participation and make sure that the government knows what data is acquired through camera traps. When camera trapping is set in sensitive areas, it’s important that the government partners take decisions as to how the information and images acquired are stored and shared.
Scientists are often criticised for their inability to communicate research expeditions and outcomes to public audiences, both in the nations where they operate and also internationally. Nekton was founded on the principle of bringing science and story-telling together to amplify host nation scientists as leading voices and ambassadors. During the expedition, the first descents were undertaken by Seychellois scientists. Through partnership with Seychellois media, content was produced, published and broadcast within Seychelles. In partnership with Associated Press and Sky, content from the expedition was published and broadcast in 140 countries globally including 18,000 articles (in print and digital) and over 4000 video broadcast packages. These included the first live subsea documentary series, newscasts and Presidential Address by the President of Seychelles, Danny Faure.
Flexibility in planning daily activities
Mutual understanding of science and media needs and activities
Narratives owned by the host nation country
Partnerships with host nation and international media partners.
Pre-familiarisation of science and communication team is imperative to ensure an easy workflow
Science and Communication plans need to be co-produced together to identify and then create content that reflects these ambitions.
With poaching being a huge threat to saiga, especially given the demand for saiga horn in the illegal wildlife trade, outreach plays a very important role. ACBK holds every year in May the “Saiga Day” together with the Saiga Conservation Alliance, in which members of the steppe clubs participate in games, crafts, competitions and other educational and entertainment programs.
Participating communities and schools.
The outreach creates support for saiga conservation in neighbouring communities. Led by ACBK, the partnership is working to educate the local population about the threats to nature and the necessity of its conservation. A special monitoring group that was created regularly conducts outreach campaigns about the illegality of the saiga horn trade among the rural population. They are raising awareness of the youth living in key settlements located in the area of each saiga population to gain deeper knowledge about this species, and mobilise them around the 10 formed clubs of “Saiga Friends” in Kazakhstan. Unemployment forces many local people to poach. The clubs teach the children the important role of each species and the consequences that poaching of wildlife may have on the whole ecosystem.
Using a flagship species to catalyze policy changes
In this case, the saiga is used to catalyze this incredible protection initiative which also aims to re-establish self-sustaining populations of other original large steppe grazing herbivores - Przewalski’s horse, kulan and goitered gazelle as well as understand the role of the ‘steppe’ wolf in maintaining healthy populations of saiga antelopes and to ensure that all these areas, their rich wildlife and local communities can be sustained economically in the long term.
The key enabling factor for this is a tremendous partnership between multiple conservation organizations and the Government of Kazakhstan, which has always viewed this project as a long-term process.
The initiative is implemented by the ACBK with the support of the Committee of Forestry and Wildlife of the Ministry of Agriculture of Kazakhstan, Fauna & Flora International, Frankfurt Zoological Society, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and it complements the work of the national authorities.
The saiga experienced a massive die-off in 2015. Climatic conditions transformed a usually harmless bacterial infection into a dangerous outbreak that killed more than 60% of the saiga antelope. More than 200,000 saiga antelope died of a virulent infection over a 3-week period. A bacterium (Pasteurella multocida) was identified as the cause which caused extensive internal bleeding. The bacterium does not typically harm healthy saiga, which suggested that an environmental factor might have made the microbe more dangerous. The team analysed weather data from 1979 to the mid-2010s, a period that included three mass die-offs of saiga — in 1981, 1988 and 2015. They found that the outbreaks were linked to relatively high daily temperatures and humidity levels.
Careful management is needed to protect the remaining populations of this critically endangered species, especially in the face of climate change
Nature Collectibles are digital twins of a real world species or NFTC (non-fungible tokens for conservation) living on a zero-carbon blockchain. They can be collected and traded and create non-ear-marked funding for protected and conserved areas.
The unique aspect of those non-fungible tokens that represent a conserved species in a protected or conserved area. They are written to a zero-carbon blockchain where they cannot be copied or multiplied, making them a unique and rare collectible item, like a piece of art.
Non-fungible tokens for conservation have great potential but are lacking behind other NFTs, because adaption in the conservation area is especially slow
Thanks to the Restor.eco platform, we analyze the restoration potential of our reserve, monitoring changes over time with satellite images and geospatial data, thus knowing the local biodiversity and its characteristics, current and potential soil carbon, as well as other variables such as patterns of land cover, soil acidity, or annual precipitation, using machine learning, artificial intelligence, and scientific units of measure.
Access to spatial information.
Updated scientific data and resources.
Increases the impact, scale, and sustainability of restoration efforts.
Restor is accelerating the global restoration movement by connecting everyone, everywhere to local restoration.
Restor connects people to scientific data, supply chains, funding, and each other to increase the impact, scale, and sustainability of restoration efforts.
Is not just about trees or forests, but also about grasslands, wetlands, coastal habitats and all the other places that support life on Earth.
In order to commit Research-Practice Teams in the Heritage Place Lab on a voluntary basis, it was necessary to establish the production of tangible outputs that would be useful for individuals, institutions and heritage places. The Heritage Place Lab proposed to develop and publish the research agendas resulting from the process, the publication of a special issue on the Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development (Emerald) which is an important step for academics, and the production of Nature-Culture solutions to be published on PANORAMA.
- WHLP runs the PANORAMA Nature-Culture Community;
- ICCROM, main implementing partner is itself a research institution and has in-house publishing;
- Partnership established with the Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development (Emerald) for the development of the special issue.
The process of publishing outputs adds to the process of the online incubator workshops, so it is important to calculate the timing for both processes, as well as counting with resources for editorial work and follow-up. This needs to be established before starting the implementation.
Collaboratively assessing management effectiveness of World Heritage properties
Lead authors of key resources were involved as facilitators of the Heritage Place Lab
World Heritage Leadership Programme
Resources used during the pilot phase of the Heritage Place Lab
World Heritage Leadership Programme
The Heritage Place Lab tested concepts and tools being developed under or in collaboration with the WHL including the Knowledge Framework for Managing World Heritage, Enhancing Our Heritage Toolkit 2.0 (EOH 2.0), as well as the case studies’ database of PANORAMA Nature-Culture Community (https://panorama.solutions/en/portal/nature-culture). For the purpose of developing World Heritage properties’ practice-led research agendas, the Heritage Place Lab proposed that each Research-Practice Team work on assignments between workshops that were later presented. The sequence of the assignments was designed to feed into the production of the research agendas for each World Hertage property, using the Tools 1, 2 and 4 of the EOH 2.0 Toolkit which aims at assessing management effectiveness. The Teams evaluated the shared understanding of values and attributes, governance arrangements and factor affecting their heritage places, which allowed to identify management issues and research priorities.
- The WHLP is currently developing a number of manuals and tools to support the management of World Heritage properties. These were possible to test during the Heritage Place Lab pilot phase.
- The involvement in the project of authors of these manuals and tools, as well as from practitioners that applied these tools on their sites facilitated the process.
- The manuals and tools have been created for the use of managers of World Heritage and other heritage places, and they were more difficult to understand by researchers. However, in the process of using the tools, it helped researchers to understand management more closely, and to identify management needs and research needs based on issues on the ground, connecting more closely with the sites.
- The collaborative work between researchers and site managers assessing management effectiveness was fundamental to strenghten the research-practice partnerships and enabled the inception of new potential projects and plans within Teams.
