USAID PREPARED Project in East Africa USAID/Kenya and USAID/East Africa
Summary
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Kenya and East Africa PREPARED project addresses the need to improve data collection and use in protected areas in East Africa, where poaching has been an intractable problem. Challenges include lack of trust between some organizations and limited ability to use data for decision-making due to outdated and inconsistent information collection systems. PREPARED formed the Partnership with a range of stakeholders. Partners articulated their needs for technology to improve the collection and use of wildlife data which informed the design and testing of the Wildlife Information and Landscape Data application. This comprehensive, off-the-shelf data collection and reporting tool is now used by rangers of different literacy levels as they implement anti-poaching initiatives in the landscapes of East Africa.
Problem
Despite progress, anti-poaching efforts in East Africa are challenged by various factors associated with data collection and use, including: • Lack of information-sharing and trust among national agencies, conservancies, and other conservation organizations. • No common data standards or data repository, making it difficult to understand dynamics at the landscape level. • Rudimentary data collection tools and methods for communicating incidents, making data collection, analysis, and use unnecessarily slow or Learning Question ineffective. Addressed: • Limited use of analytics to understand poaching dynamics and how to adapt management approaches. What are some successful • Inconsistent perceptions of data accuracy by organizations working on examples of partnerships used the same landscape, including the extent of under- or over-reporting on to deliver competency-building endangered species at a regional or national level. activities, and what made them • Apathy and lack of trust among the public, partly due to poor work? communication.
PREPARED Project | Combating Wildlife Trafficking Case Study | Page 1
Photo credit: PREPARED
Combating Wildlife Trafficking Case Study: Data Collection