Title
Integrated Technology for Improving Effectiveness of Management of Poaching in Protected Areas.
Author(s)
Rainey, Hugo; Lynam, Antony; Bergl, Richard; Cronin, Drew; Gordon, Chris; Palmer, Jonathan; Stokes, Emma
Published
2017
Abstract
Protected areas are crucial for sustaining populations of endangered wildlife and their habitats, along with the natural resources upon which local communities are dependent. Unfortunately, many protected areas lack systems to enforce staff accountability, assess threats, or evaluate success and failure, resulting in protected areas which vary along a continuum from chaos to mature optimized processes. A broad partnership of conservation organizations developed the SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) Approach to help measure management effectiveness. The SMART Approach combines standardized patrol data collection, site-based database management, and decision-making, with an emphasis on capacity building and best practices for protection. This approach, now adopted in >200 sites around the world, provides protected area managers and community groups the ability to empower staff, boost motivation, increase efficiency and promote credible and transparent monitoring of the effectiveness of antipoaching efforts. We illustrate the utility of SMART using examples from case studies representing a range of conservation areas, from formal government protected areas to community conservation areas, in both the marine and terrestrial realms, where law enforcement monitoring has helped to improve management effectiveness, adjust strategies and enhance conservation success. Advanced features, such as adaptive management planning, intelligence monitoring, mobile data collection, and SMART Connect, a new cloud-based application allowing users to leverage real-time information sharing and centralized management capabilities, are now further improving effectiveness of anti-poaching efforts, and providing standardized measures of poaching levels and enforcement efforts across sites critical to combatting the poaching of apes, tigers, elephants, rhinoceros, and other endangered species.
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PUB26903