Law Enforcement Monitoring in the

Albertine Rift

Andy Plumptre, Deo Kujirakwinja, Felix Mulindahabi,

Aggrey Rwetsiba, M. Driciru and Fred Wanyama

Why are we doing ICDPs

As Conservation Practitioners we are using

development projects to:

Build better relations with the communities around where we

work

To some extent improve their livelihoods

Change attitudes for the better with respect to conservation

Change behaviours, particularly with regards to illegal

activities

Very few projects can demonstrate reduced illegal

activities as a result of an ICD project

Need to be able to show this – can use Ranger-based

monitoring

Development and Roll out of MIST

MIST developed by Ecological

Software Solutions with GTZ

support in Murchison Falls Park.

Project ended in 2001 and no

support to continue it

WCS with MacArthur Funds

helped UWA roll it out to rest of

their parks

Then expanded to Nyungwe

(Rwanda),Virunga Park and then

Kahuzi Biega, Okapi etc (DRC).

Led to training for all PAs in

Rwanda

Expansion across Africa and World

Adopted as database by MIKE

which led to it being rolled out

across all MIKE sites in Africa and

Asia

Demonstrated in NY and adopted by

other sites – notably Cambodia and

Gabon but also Russia, Thailand –

Tiger programs in particular

MIST analysis embedded within a site or

National Monitoring Framework

Identify why protected area is important globally and nationally

Identify threats to these conservation targets

What strategies are currently used to address these threats

What can be monitored to tell us whether we are reducing the threats

What data are collected, by who and when

Who is responsible and how often does he/she report

When are results assessed and decisions made on the strategy

NB. More than just MIST data feeds into this analysis

National Monitoring plans developed for

Uganda and Rwanda

Developed plans at site level in 10

Parks and 6 wildlife reserves in

Uganda

All three parks in Rwanda

Virunga, Kahuzi, Okapi, Salonga,

Maiko, Itombwe in DRC

Data requirements include data

collected for MIST

How has law enforcement monitoring helped?

Planning patrols and reviewing patrol

coverage

Led to more directed management of patrols

in most sites where results reviewed on a

monthly basis

Mapping locations of key threats

Maps have been used to demonstrate

increases in threats leading to political action

Maps used to demonstrate improvements in

management to senior staff

Maps used to justify changes in proposed

strategies

Patrol coverage – Kibale National Park

2004 2005 2006 2007

2008 2009

Mapping illegal activities

2004 2005 2006 2007

2008 2009

How has law enforcement monitoring helped?

Trends in encounter rates of threats

Used to make an annual assessment of the

management effectiveness

In PNKB couple this with a threats reduction

assessment analysis – Margolius and Salafsky

Maps of species distributions

While not an good measure of species

abundance, location data are still useful to

know where species are being sighted or not

Data have been used to support

prosecutions in some areas

Trends in encounter rates

Identify where patrol effort is high

Can plot where patrols

have been and the relative

frequency of patrolling

Can the coverage be

improved? – about 60.4%

of landscape patrolled in

5-9 years

Only 22% has been

patrolled effectively to

provide a level of

deterrence though

Look at patrol effort in relation to patrol posts

75% of observations within 5km and 50% within 3 km of patrol post

Impact on illegal activities

Where is LE money invested

Most of conservation

budget spent on

patrolling around patrol

posts

Partly due to the fact that

area to patrol increases

with distance from post

Partly due to most effort

being close to the post

Problems with MIST

Current analysis looks at trends across PA only –

can’t look at spatial patterns in trends in PA

This assumes that equal patrol effort is made between

observation periods and that same cells are visited –

unlikely

Also assumes equal detectability of species or illegal

activities

Doesn’t allow analyses of different types of

patrols – eg intelligence-based, vehicle patrols etc

MIKE

SMART - Very wide engagementFounders

Additional users Current partners

Link intelligence information to patrolling

Facilitate evaluation and planning of patrols

Improve analysis and interpretation of data

Improved training materials and support

New features in SMART

Link intelligence information to patrolling

Facilitate evaluation and planning of patrols

Improve analysis and interpretation of data

Improved training materials and support

New features in SMART

• Less bugs

• More flexibility

• Multiple languages

• GPS/PDA-compatible

• Open Source – plug-ins likely to be developed

• Looking at more robust analyses of RBM data

Feb ‘13 SMART 1.0 released

Mar’13 Regional training workshop (Central Africa)

Apr ’13 SMART 1.1 released

May’13 Regional training workshop (East Africa)

Jul ’13 Hand-held tablet/PDA support

~2013 Case-tracking/real time data support (in the

pipeline)

Timeline

Thanks

PA Wardens of all the parks

with MIST in the AR (ICCN,

RDB and UWA)

Rangers collecting data

Funding: USAID,

MacArthur Foundation, Neu

Foundation, Newmans Own,

USFWS, WCS, IUCN SOS,