INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Green Technology
New technology platform
helps African park
rangers to protect iconic
animal species
Responding to the elephant poaching
crisis illustrated in 2016’s Great Elephant
Census (GEC), philanthropist Paul Allen
and his team of technologists and
conservation experts are partnering with
park managers across Africa to provide
a new technology platform to better
protect this iconic species and other
wildlife threatened by human activities.
The GEC documented an alarming
30% loss of savannah elephants over
the past seven years, primarily due
to increased ivory poaching. This
confirmed conservationists’ greatest
fears and gives new importance to
technology to aid in addressing
this crisis.
The Domain Awareness System (DAS)
is a tool that aggregates the positions
of radios, vehicles, aircraft and animal
sensors to provide users with a real-
time dashboard that depicts the
wildlife being protected, as well as
the people and resources protecting
them and the potential illegal activity
threatening them.
www.intelligentcio.com
“Accurate data plays a critical role in
conservation,” said Paul Allen. “Rangers
deserve more than just dedication and
good luck. They need to know in real-
time what is happening in their parks.”
The visualisation and analysis
capabilities of DAS allow park
managers to make immediate tactical
decisions to then efficiently deploy
resources for interdiction and active
management. “DAS has enabled us to
establish a fully integrated approach
to our security and anti-poaching
work within northern Kenya,” said
Mike Watson, Chief Executive Officer
of Lewa Conservancy where the first
DAS installation was deployed late last
year. “This is making us significantly
more effective and coordinated and is
showing us limitless opportunities for
conservation applications.”
The system has been installed at six
protected wildlife conservation sites
since November 2016. Working with
Save the Elephants, African Parks
Network, Wildlife Conservation Society
and the Singita Grumeti Fund as
well as the Lewa Conservancy and
Northern Rangelands Trust, a total of
15 locations are expected to adopt the
system this year.
“When we are fully operational by the
end of 2017, the system will cover
more than 90,000 square miles of
protected area,” said Ted Schmitt,
Lead Programme Manager for DAS. “In
speaking with park managers over the
last few years, a large gap was a lack
of a single technology platform that
could make great use of the data to
direct enforcement efforts and enable
deep analysis.”
The SMART Partnership, a consortium
of conservation NGOs, government
partners and technology companies,
is working with Paul Allen’s team to
integrate DAS with SMART software
used in nearly 500 sites across 46
countries to measure, evaluate and
adaptively improve the effectiveness
of wildlife law enforcement patrols and
site-based conservation activities.
DAS is also powering the Save the
Elephants Tracking App, a mobile tool
for rangers and researchers that is
already proving effective in many field
sites across Africa.
“If you know where elephants are,
and how they are moving, then you
can help protect them,” said Iain
Douglas-Hamilton, president of Save
the Elephants. “We’ve been tracking
elephants for a long time to get ahead
of poachers in this way and the DAS
is taking this into a new realm. I’m
absolutely thrilled that Paul Allen is
doing this. DAS is a game changer.”
With early and eager adoption by
the protected areas to date, the
implementation team is focusing on
the integration of new data sources
as they become available. Satellites,
drones, camera traps, animal sensors,
weather monitors and technology
yet to be invented can all be used for
managing and protecting wildlife no
matter what threats develop in
the future.
INTELLIGENTCIO
57