The world’s last mountain gorillas, all just over 1,000 of them, live in one of the Earth’s most dangerous conservation landscapes. The Greater Virunga Landscape straddles the borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is periodically engulfed by armed conflict, targeted by poachers and squeezed by a growing human population hungry for land and resources. That their numbers have actually grown, from 480 in 2010 to 1,063 today, is remarkable.
Behind this immense effort is a coalition of rangers, scientists and government agencies. Increasingly, technology is playing a critical supporting role. For over a decade, two digital tools have been humming away In the background of conservation efforts in the field: SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool) and EarthRanger. Now, the two have joined forces.
A new alliance for conservation tech
SMART is a long trusted tool for rangers working in Greater Virunga. The platform allows field teams to log everything from wildlife sightings to poaching evidence, before transmitting that data in real time to a centralised database. It then builds maps, plans patrol routes and helps managers decide where to deploy limited resources across a 777-square-kilometre habitat. Since its 2012 launch, it has been used at over 1,000 sites across 70 countries.
The SMART-EarthRanger Conservation Alliance (SERCA), the first-of-its-kind collaboration to transform how the world’s protected and conserved areas are managed. EarthRanger, developed by Vulcan Inc., takes a complementary approach. It provides real-time situational awareness through the live tracking of rangers and animals, and produces dynamic dashboards to help operation centres respond faster to emerging threats.
Together, under the newly formed SMART EarthRanger Conservation Alliance (SERCA), the two platforms bring together nine leading conservation organisations. It’s already up and running across more than 2,500 sites in over 100 countries, and has the potential to support upwards of 100,000 wildlife conservationists in their vital work.
The goal of their partnership is to end, or at least mediate the fragmentation that has long plagued conservation technology. It’ll give field teams better software and more joined-up support, rather than leaving them to navigate disconnected systems alone.
Why it matters on the ground
The challenges facing mountain gorilla conservation give important context towards understanding why this kind of integration matters. Rangers working across the Virunga region are stretched thin, with limited resources and vast swathes of dense land to cover. Many lack access to adequate data collection devices, and training in digital tools remains inconsistent, particularly at the management level. To add to the impossible working conditions, over 200 rangers have been killed in the last century by presumed poachers looking for valuable bush meat.
“There is a capacity gap to be filled in data analyses,” Eustrate Uzabaho of the International Gorilla Conservation Programme (IGCP) has noted, pointing to a shortage of personnel who understand how raw field data can be translated into policy change.
SERCA aims to address this gap by pooling resources and the expertise of the organisations behind them. This will allow conservation teams at the most challenged sites in the world access to tools and training that were previously out of reach.
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A fragile recovery
In an undeniable milestone, mountain gorillas were reclassified from critically endangered to endangered in 2018. However, at just over 1,000, the population remains perilously small, and the threats have not disappeared.
The biology of the species makes every individual count. Females don’t reproduce until they are eight to ten years old, and typically give birth only once every four to six years. Recovery is painfully slow, and losses, when they come, are hard to absorb.
Better, more coordinated data won’t solve the political and logistical challenges of conservation across three national jurisdictions. What it can do is sharpen the response when threats emerge.
As Uzabaho has put it: “With the adoption of new tools, rangers are the first to witness change, determine impact and adapt to evolving challenges.” The question now is whether SERCA can ensure those tools are truly within reach, for every ranger, at every site that needs them.
