SMART Using cutting edge technology to monitor Loisaba’s wildlife populations

Managing a conservancy as vast and diverse as Loisaba in a challenging landscape with limited resources can be tough, really tough. To do so effectively we have to be ‘Smart’ – literally. SMART also known by its longer name (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) is a specifically developed protected area management tool designed to measure, evaluate and improve the overall effectiveness of law enforcement patrols. In doing so protected area managers, such as Loisaba Conservancy CEO Tom Silvester are provided with the necessary information at their fingertips to make adaptive management decisions.

In April we started the SMART journey with assistance from our partners Space for Giants and the Zoological Society of London. Amos Chege and Redempta Njeri spent several months gradually training rangers in the use of a simple mobile phone App called Cybertracker, which is essentially the data collection vehicle for SMART. Some of the rangers got the hang of it straight away while others struggled, but by the end of June we had identified and trained sufficient rangers to have one competent user per patrol group on the conservancy.

Today, every patrol group on the conservancy is hard at work collecting critical information on wildlife sightings and potential threats (e.g. snares and/or poaching) to wildlife. Because the phones that the rangers use are GPS enabled, we are able to view their patrols on a computer giving us an indication of the patrol effort (e.g. distance patrolled, hours patrolled etc.) where they recorded sightings and threat and possibly most importantly, what the blind spots are on the conservancy.

Every week, Amos Chege, Loisaba’s Conservation Officer visits each patrol base and downloads the data onto his computer. Together with input from the Space for Giants team a weekly report is created giving us a spatial view of what is happening on the conservancy and this is then discussed by the management to take appropriate action. SMART is proving to be a ‘game-changer’ and is going to help Loisaba develop into one of the leading conservancies in the landscape.

By: Izzy Parsons