These initial deployments led to improvements in patrol effort and management, as well as better protection of the wildlife in these protected areas. This work began initially in 2016 with a focus on rhinos in Etosha National Park, in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund and the Namibian Ministry of Environment & Tourism, and in Damaraland, partnering with Save the Rhino Trust. Using SMART, ranger patrols in Namibia are now collecting field observations on rugged tablets and smartphones, which allows information to be quickly analyzed to improve conservation strategies in order to better protect wildlife.
West african black rhino number software#
North Carolina Zoo has worked for years with several partners in the region to implement an anti-poaching program based on SMART conservation software that the Zoo helped develop. Bergl (L) and Cronin (R) work onsite in Africa using SMART technology for anti-poaching efforts Meanwhile in northeastern Namibia, there are five national parks that are home to numerous rare and threatened species, as well as thousands of elephants.Ībove: Drs. West of Etosha, an area known as Damaraland is home to the last free-roaming population of the desert-adapted black rhino, which is conserved largely through the efforts of local community conservancies. Northern Namibia, and specifically Etosha National Park, is home to the largest black rhino population in the world, and also supports good numbers of southern white rhinos. Namibia, in Southern Africa, is a critically important country for rhino conservation, as well as many other iconic African wildlife species, including large populations of elephants, lions, cheetahs, African wild dogs, and antelope. If the threat of poaching is not reversed, the remaining rhinos in Africa will face a similar fate.
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This poaching has driven the western black rhino, one of four African black rhino subspecies, to extinction, while only two individual northern white rhinos remain in the world. Drew Conin, Associate Curator of International Conservation for the North Carolina Zoo.Īcross Africa, rhino populations are declining due to poaching for their horns, primarily to supply traditional medicine markets in Asia.