Monitoring vast areas and ranger activity, improving conservation operations with new network solutions
Partner: Northern Rangelands Trust
Key Species: Black Rhino, Elephant, Lion, Cheetah, Giraffe
Deployment: 2019
Deployed in 2019, the technical solution is helping to pre-empt human-wildlife conflict, prevent poaching and assist rangers with habitat and rehabilitation management. Lewa Wildlife Conservancy represents hope for a rich diversity of wildlife, including endangered Black Rhinos, African Elephants, Leopard and the Grevy Zebra.
Across the world, rangers play an indispensable role in protecting biodiversity and ecosystems and work in challenging conditions. Researchers found that only 43.2% of rangers said they always had access to communication devices on patrol or at outposts in a survey of ranger working conditions. This statistic is alarming as rangers can often find themselves in threatening situations, from predator species or in a potential confrontation with poachers.
In Lewa, rangers need ways to communicate with their central control room at all times, so they can call for help or give a warning of potentially harmful activity to wildlife or themselves. Equally, when the operations room sees something of interest from other cameras or data sources across the Protected Area, it must be able to divert ranger patrols to mitigate threats immediately.
Connected Conservation partners have extended secure connectivity, communications and LoRaWAN coverage across important conservation areas. The local Dimension Data team based in Kenya has installed new masts and onboarded new digital radios onto the communications backbones. They have delivered fully encrypted, reliable and secure communications and connectivity to vital black spots and removed communications bottlenecks. This technology allows the operations room to track ranger patrols from GPS coordinates communicated from their radios. It enables better tracking of ranger patrols and improves communication between central control and rangers from anywhere in the park.
Impact:
- Secure connectivity and communications to protect 25,000 new hectares of vital wildlife habitat
- Better conservation management with onboarding of digital radios for ranger teams
- Only 1 elephant was poached in 2020
- The lowest level of elephant poaching in member conservancies on record
