Wildlife Crime Technology Project

In 2012—a year in which poachers killed at least 745 rhinos and 22,000 elephants in Africa alone—Google.org presented WWF with a $5 million Global Impact Award to “harness technological innovation to stop conservation crime.” This visionary investment launched the WCTP, through which WWF and our partners seek solutions to end the global wildlife poaching epidemic. This scourge is taking a dangerous toll on rangers, threatening the livelihoods of communities, damaging ecosystems, and emptying them of wildlife—all to feed an illegal wildlife trade valued at more than an estimated $10 billion each year.

We set out to create an umbrella of technology tools to support rangers in their anti-poaching efforts, with an initial focus on piloting the use and integration of three specific technologies in Namibia: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones), wildlife tracking tags, and SMART (Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool), a ranger patrol analysis software program. Following the conclusion of Phase 1 (October 2012-June 2014), it became clear that we needed to adapt our approach, since governments across Africa were banning the use of UAVs; cell coverage for tracking tags was poor in many of the continent’s poaching hotspots; and governments were resistant to adopting the SMART software system. We realized that we needed to rapidly pivot from a top-down technology-driven approach to a bottom-up problem-driven approach if we were to make a meaningful impact on the poaching crises.

Building on the learning from Phase 1, we embraced Google’s spirit of innovation and turned our focus to identifying technological solutions to several key challenges. First, because most poaching occurs at night, systems need to function in darkness. Second, since connectivity and real-time sharing of information and data was critical to success, we needed to explore other types of networks for our communications backbone. Third, harsh field conditions necessitated that we look beyond “off-the-shelf” technology, instead creating our own adapted solutions.