Surveillance Safari: Crowdsourcing an anti-poaching movement in South Africa
In South Africa’s Balule Nature Reserve, an all-female anti-poaching unit is using live streaming and Samsung’s smartphone technology to support its conservation efforts and enlist volunteers from around the world.
For upwards of three million years, we humans and our antecedents have used tools to interface with the natural world around us. But in the last few decades, the human population has exploded and our tools today are having globally damaging impacts, transforming biomes across the planet. Yet our technologies also have the potential to mend our relationship with nature, protecting ecosystems and recovering lost biodiversity–if we develop and deploy them in the right ways.
The earliest stone tools were discovered in Africa–a continent that also harbors some of the world’s most iconic wild animal species, including the so-called “Big Five”–elephant, lion, leopard, rhinoceros and buffalo. So, it’s relevant and appropriate that Samsung, one of the world’s leading consumer electronics companies, is working alongside conservationists in South Africa to protect these animals and others like them.
In 2020 the Kruger National Park faced a crisis. Covering just under 20,000 square kilometers of South Africa’s northeast quarter, Kruger is one of Africa’s biggest game reserves, typically attracting around one million visitors each year, many of whom come to see the Big Five. When South Africa entered the first phase of COVID-19 lockdowns on March 27, 2020, those visitors vanished. This spelled trouble.
“Resources for animals, rangers and anti-poaching units were vastly depleted,” says conservationist and digital marketing expert Peter Stewart. “Many local people who worked in ecotourism lost their jobs, so there was a much higher risk of informal poaching.”
This was especially true of the iconic rhinos that are a particular target for poaching gangs in Kruger National Park.
Stewart is a partner at Africam, a wildlife media company that uses live HD streaming cameras to support conservation education around the world. He and his team were approached by Samsung with a possible means of compensating for the crash in visitor numbers and the commensurate dangers this posed to wildlife in the park: If people couldn’t come to Kruger, what if Samsung and Africam could bring the park to them–or more precisely to their mobile devices?
By combining Africam’s live streaming infrastructure with the advanced camera systems and mobile technology of the latest Samsung Galaxy devices, the new partnership would build a global community of virtual rangers who could, in theory, monitor wildlife around the clock. The result was Wildlife Watch–a pilot program launched on March 3, 2021, which installed Samsung Galaxy S20 FE handsets, repurposed specifically for surveillance, in the Balule Nature Reserve – an around 99,000-acre tract of land on the eastern edge of Kruger National Park.
Wildlife Watch also enlisted the Black Mambas–the world’s first all-female anti-poaching unit, consisting of 36 rangers. The Mambas were provided with Samsung smartphones to help them monitor wildlife, communicate with one another, and document their day-to-day work. Real-time tracking meant they didn’t have to rely on radios, plus fellow rangers could, for example, respond more swiftly to the presence of poachers or a pride of lions.
Wildlife Watch recorded more than seven million social engagements over a four-month period, as humans everywhere turned to their mobile devices to connect with the outside world. In one instance, virtual rangers identified a wild dog with a snare on one of its legs. They quickly alerted rangers, who removed the snare and gave the animal medical treatment. What’s more, the Black Mambas were a hit with global audiences and have since become important role models in their communities.
“Our mission is to show people that we are here and we're patrolling the boundaries of the reserve to make the Kruger National Park an undesirable place for poachers,” says Sergeant Felicia Mogakane of the Black Mambas. “People started to believe in us because they've really seen our impact—that our model is effective… we are protecting the wildlife in there. Ever since we've been deployed, no rhino has been killed in our reserve.”
Following the success of the Wildlife Watch pilot, Samsung, Africam and the Black Mambas recently announced an expansion of the program. The second phase launched to the public on March 4, 2023 and makes use of the advanced camera systems in the latest Galaxy S21 Ultra and S23 Ultra handsets, including enhanced low-light capabilities and 10 times optical zoom to generate HD video day and night. The technology continues to support the Black Mambas in their work, not only protecting iconic wildlife in the Balule Nature Reserve, but also engaging with people in rural communities, many of whom have never seen species like lion, elephant and rhino.
This second phase also tested the Samsung Galaxy SmartTag2 as an additional means of monitoring movements in the reserve. The tags are a great way for the Black Mambas to orient themselves in the reserve, providing location markers for things like camera traps, signs of infraction or evidence of animal behaviors. The Galaxy SmartTags can be tracked using SmartThings Find, part of Samsung’s SmartThings connected ecosystem, which provides personalized and automated experiences using AI.
The wild habitats that remain in sub-Saharan Africa continue to face threats from human encroachment, poaching and human-wildlife conflict. It is estimated that the region as a whole has lost around 50 percent of its large mammals in the past few decades. Whether we like it or not, we are the custodians of these spaces and their future survival depends on us. Mobile technologies are crucial to the future of conservation—they provide vital tools on the ground for ranger units like the Black Mambas. But they also amplify local issues and perspectives, giving global audiences the opportunity not only to learn about these unique ecosystems and species, but also to play an active part in conserving them.
