How EarthRanger Technology Protects Wildlife and People: 4 Use Cases

Over the last few decades, technology has been increasingly utilized to manage conservation areas. This includes camera traps, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, drones, wildlife collars and tagging among others. 

In protected areas, employing the wide variety of tools to gather data,  such as EarthRanger (https://www.earthranger.com/), enables those on the conservation front line to monitor, integrate and display the data across the often thousands of hectares. EarthRanger collects, consolidates, and exhibits all historical and available data and combines it with reports from the field to provide one unified view of collared wildlife, rangers, enforcement assets, and infrastructure within a landscape and or protected area. 

The GEF EarthRanger Project is supporting the implementation of EarthRanger and associated technologies across 6 parks covering a total area of ~4.9 million hectares. Project executing partners include Conservation International-Africa Field Division and Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. It is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2).  Site-level partners include DWNP in Botswana, PPF in Mozambique and African Parks, Wildlife Consersation Society (WCS), and Noe in the Republic of Congo Brazzaville. 

In its second year of implementation, site partners reported using EarthRanger to support various aspects of their work and address conservation threats such as poaching and human-wildlife conflict in the areas and coordination across the various technical teams working in the landscapes. 

The sites shared the following anecdotes from the Field: 

Challenge/ Threat: Illegal Fishing 

Solution: Since September 2023, Skylight has been linked to EarthRanger to alert to each new entry of an illegal fishing vessel into the marine protected area. The Skylight real-time tracking system allows setting up alerts in the area of interest within the land and marine park. On receipt of an alert, the park sends out pedestrian and marine rangers who are tracked via GPS units who then communicate directly with EarthRanger on the remediation measure required. Skylight is an online monitoring platform that leverages artificial intelligence to enable maritime analysts to identify suspicious vessel behavior and alert authorities who can investigate and take enforcement and compliance action when necessary.  

2. Site : Conkouati Ndoki Douli National Park  

Challenge/ Threat: Human Elephant Conflict 

Solution: The GEF ER project has supported the purchase of 5 elephant collars. Three of the elephants have now been collared and the elephants are now actively tracked via EarthRanger ensuring they are protected and kept away from human populations. 

3. Site: Limpopo National Park (LNP) and Zinave National Park (ZNP) 

Challenge/Threat: Human-Wildlife Conflict and Asset (field vehicle tracking and management) 

Through the GEF EarthRanger project, LNP hasdeployed 59 car track units into vehicles. The park manager has found that monitoring vehicles (car track) connected via cellular networks helps to understand vehicle movement on EarthRanger and historical data of vehicle movements concerning proper vehicle use and incidents (and accident investigations). 

Similarly, through EarthRanger the park has been able to carry out wildlife monitoring, understand wildlife movement through the massive landscape and alleviate potential Human Wildlife Conflict.

4. Site: Noubale Ndoki National Park 

1. Challenge/Threat: Poaching Incidents 

WCS is working with the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park ( NNNP) antipoaching and law enforcement teams that operate out of satellite camps. Rangers stationed at these camps communicate to the control room through GPS units that are also connected to the park’s EarthRanger system. During the quarter, WCS developed monthly ER reports to track poaching threats in the NNNP and the surrounding periphery. The EarthRanger reports comprise information gathered from aerial and patrols, and information gathered by the WCS Counter Wildlife Trafficking Team. During the quarter, information gathered helped WCS pinpoint a poaching threat in the park. Data on illegal poacher movements was documented by our team and fed into a case being built against poaching. network.  

Similarly, a report was received concerning an elephant poaching group who were reported to be active in an area of the park’s periphery. This was signaled to EarthRanger and allowed the deployment of several resources, including two ranger teams and a plane. Unfortunately, the group was not discovered (due to a large target area with low visibility), but it is a good use case for using EarthRanger to make park management decisions in the future.  

2. Challenge/Threat: Wildlife Monitoring 

A dead gorilla was detected by a research team in the north of the park and signaled in EarthRanger.This allowed the team to evaluate the feasibility of deploying a veterinary team to the field to test the carcass for the presence of zoonotic diseases as part of WCS Congo’s health monitoring and pandemic preparedness program.  

3. Challenge/Threat: Illegal Fishing 

In the October-December 2023 quarter, illegal fishing camps were detected on the Goualougo River inside the park  through an aerial patrol. These camps were signaled on EarthRanger by the park’s pilot, then a patrol was redeployed in real-time to investigate and dismantle any illegal fishing camps and issue warnings to people who illegally entered the park.