The war against animal poaching will be won by data, not drones

Author(s)

Matthew Reynolds, Wired

Date Published

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The war against poaching is not going well. Every year, around 20,000 African elephants are killed for their ivory – a trade driven by strong demand in China and the Far East. 

 
In South Africa, people clamouring to get their hands on rhino horns have pushed the death rate to 100 rhinos every month. But a consortium of animal conservation groups has come up with a solution that could rangers the edge over poachers: more data. 

“[Poaching] is getting worse in a lot of places, and it’s getting worse because it’s getting a lot more organised,” says Jonathan Palmer, head of the office of strategic technology at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “A lot of poaching, especially of high value animals like elephants and rhinos is now driven by organised gangs.” 

And these gangs are armed. Thanks to the high price of ivory, which, before China outlawed the ivory trade, was worth upwards of £950 per kilo, these criminal organisations can afford to equip poachers with submachine guns and AK47s. The rangers tasked with stopping them often have nothing more than a rifle and a handful of bullets.

According to Palmer, many rangers in sub-Saharan protected areas are woefully under-equipped to defend the vast areas they are tasked with patrolling. On average, an area the size of New York’s central park is patrolled by just two rangers with a single gun between them and a yearly budget of £15. “You’d think the task is close to impossible,” he says.

But Palmer is hoping that even if the poachers can’t be out-gunned, it might be possible to put them under pressure a different way. As part of a group consisting of the Wildlife Conservation Society and eight other agencies, Palmer has developed a software platform that helps park rangers track of their patrols and the activities of poachers in their area. The system, called SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) is already in use in more than 600 sites across 55 countries. It isn’t sexy and high-tech, but the technology being used is already having a huge impact.

“Prior to SMART there would be a lot of places where the patrolling was just ad hoc,” Palmer says. Some rangers would end up patrolling the same stretch of park every day and often their managers didn’t have much of a handle on where the poachers where. “What SMART does is help the park managers know that they are going to the places of greatest need,” he says.

The software gives rangers an overview of every single one of their patrols. 

 
When they’re out in the park, rangers log the location of signs of poachers – traps, animal carcasses or human camping grounds – and then upload this information to the SMART platform at the end of their day. 
 
Over time, they can build a picture of how effective their patrolling has been, and where they should be concentrating their efforts. In the four years since the software was released, the average patrol length has already increased by 50 per cent – meaning rangers are covering more ground that might be under threat from poachers. 

SMART Partnership

Although its deceptively simple, Palmer says that the system has completely changed how rangers do their jobs. Around the islands of Koh Rong and Koh Rong Samloem, Cambodia’s first large-scale marine protected area, the number of fishing violations already fell by 40 per cent after officials started using the SMART system. 

 
In sub-Saharan Africa, the system recorded drops in the frequency of hunting camps, gunshots and wire traps in the areas patrolled.

But Palmer wants to make the sharing of conservation data even wider. The latest version of the SMART system allows different sites to share their data with each other, giving conservation officials huge oversight over how well their rangers are doing their jobs.

 
Since protected areas cover huge areas – as much as 10 to 15 per cent of the globe in total – being able to see the reports of hundreds of rangers at one time is invaluable. The system also pools data from other sources, such as Global Forest Watch and camera traps set up to monitor wildlife remotely.

After a year-long pilot phase, 250 sites across Africa, Asia and Latin America are already using the latest version of this technology. As the rollout continues, he’s hoping that technology like this will help rangers get the edge over poachers in the long run.

Although his organisation is experimenting with remote sensors and satellite-tracking, Palmer says there are no technological shortcuts in the fight against poaching. 

 
For him, it comes down to the long job of helping rangers to do their job as effectively as possible, and never letting up the pressure on poachers. “If we ever get to the stage were we’re not struggling with how we protect nature’s strongholds then that probable means we’ve given up,” he says.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/elephant-rhino-wildlife-poaching-smart-wildlife-conservation-society