Digitising Data Collection for Enhanced Wildlife Management
Résumé
Ol Pejeta Conservancy, seeks to conserve biodiversity with a key focus on threatened species including the critically endangered black rhino. To achieve this, the conservancy undertakes robust wildlife monitoring where field teams routinely capture wildlife sightings, mortality, human-wildlife conflicts, intrusions and environmental hazards. For a long time, such data was recorded on paper datasheets and later transferred to spreadsheets for analysis. This was characterized by errors, missing information, loss of data and delayed decision making.
This solution enhanced wildlife monitoring and management through digitized data collection to reduce chances of error, missing information and delayed submissions. The project provided ruggedized phones and undertook necessary installations and training . All data is now relayed to managers within 24 hours of collection. This has greatly enhanced decision making with major influence on response time for HWC incidences and animal rescue.
Classifications
Région
Ampleur de la mise en œuvre
Ecosystème
Thème
Conservation des espèces et interventions axées sur l’approche « Une seule santé »
Défis
Objectifs de développement durable
Objectifs d’Aichi
Défis
The main challenge addressed is inefficient wildlife monitoring and management due to delays and gaps in data collection. Previously, methods of collecting and reporting field data (wildlife monitoring, anti-poaching, human-wildlife conflicts) were largely manual and required updating. Loss of data and inconsistencies were common and managers often got the data so late, two-weeks to a month after collection. Lack of geographic information on observations hindered identification of hotspots and implementation of focused interventions.
With this challenge, it was difficult to make prompt and appropriate decisions to address immediate threats to wildlife, respond to HWC incidents and analyze the temporal & spatial variation in poaching threats, HWC, wildlife mortalities among other key monitoring components. There were therefore inadequate efforts to reduce such threats to wildlife and communities leading to sustained losses in the biodiversity and livelihoods of the neighbouring communities.
Bénéficiaires
This solution benefits in-field wildlife monitoring teams in the conservancy and wildlife conservation decision makers. People in 20 communities neighbouring Ol Pejeta and biodiversity within and around the conservancy also benefit.
Blocs Constitutifs
Comment les blocs constitutifs interagissent-ils entre eux dans la solution?
Knowledge of appropriate technology (Building block 1) informs the kind of investment that will be put into implementation particularly equipment and applicable installations (Building block 2). Engagement of partners (Building block 3) who have used the identified technology (Building block 1) in the past is helpful in informing the inventory of equipment and required installations (Building block 2) for efficient use and such partners are resourceful during set up, configuration and training (Building block 4). All these are fundamental components for successfully rolling out such a technology.
Impacts
This project enhanced the monitoring capacity in the conservancy through training and equipment. Five staff members can now create a SMART database and perform necessary configurations to set up SMART and create field data collection forms while another 47 are able to effectively use SMART mobile to collect and submit data in the field. Established infrastructure has facilitated centralized storage, processing and sharing of data among wildlife management staff.
With near-real-time data collection, the management receives information from the field within 24 hours of observation and this has drastically reduced the time taken for decision making while enabling managers make decisions based on the most recent, accurate and sufficient details. Such decisions have seen improved response to human-wildlife conflict (HWC) cases, animals in distress and potential poaching threats.
Enhanced response to problem animals has reduced the number and intensity of HWC cases and their impact on the crops, livestock and property of neighbouring communities. This has in turn led to improved livelihoods and better relationships between the conservancy and communities. Such a good relationship is essential for peaceful co-existence and overall safety of wildlife and people.
Histoire
Ol Pejeta holds the largest population of the critically endangered black rhinos in E. Africa and is home to a sizable population of white rhinos. These populations are closely monitored and protected with ranger teams deployed systematically across the conservancy. The rhinos are monitored at individual level with unique identification using ear notch patterns (individuals above 2.5 years receive a unique ear notch) and explicit natural features such as broken horns, missing ears, shape & size of horns, missing tails etc. Each individual has to be sighted daily but a threshold of 4 days is acceptable after which efforts are made to search for the animal and establish whether it’s alive or dead.
For a long time, poaching was the leading threat to the population but due to enhanced anti-poaching efforts at the conservancy and in the country in general, this threat has reduced tremendously. The conservancy has had zero poaching since 2018. However, the population faced a growing threat of predation from an increasing density of lions mainly targeting calves and sub-adults. To avert this, a decision was made to collar lion prides across the conservancy to help track their ranging patterns and identify significant overlaps with rhino territories particularly those that have vulnerable individuals. Ideally, these overlaps would be identifiable by mapping daily rhino sightings against lion home ranges. However, this was not immediately possible since most rhino sighting reports did not bear GPS coordinates and those that did were recorded on paper sheets received up to two weeks later.
Prior to 2021, several rhinos were lost to predation because it was not possible to immediately predict and respond to potential encounters between lions and vulnerable rhinos despite near-real-time monitoring of lions. Upon digitization of data collection, it became possible to receive rhino sightings with accurate information and GPS coordinates on a daily basis allowing near-real-time analysis of home-range overlaps. We are now able to detect potentially deadly encounters between these species and deploy wildlife management teams accordingly to prevent such incidents. Since the establishment of this solution, predation-related mortalities have reduced from an annual average of 6 to 2 with a better co-existence of rhinos and lions.
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