Mara Elephant Project uses EarthRanger (ER), a cloud-based tool to improve, simplify and facilitate protected-area and wildlife species conservation and management. In response to a need for advanced analytics of complex data streams, MEP developed Ecoscope – an open-source Python geospatial library designed to accelerate and democratize the conversion of raw ecosystem data into actionable information to support management and policy decision-making. To ensure its adoption and deployment, Ecoscope must be further developed and made accessible, its users trained, and its methods applied to solve global conservation issues. With support from the Basecamp Explorer Foundation – Kenya and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and led by Dr. Jake Wall from Wildlife Dynamics, MEP is driving the development and implementation of Ecoscope so that datasets can be easily accessed and used to answer compelling questions and there was much progress made in 2024.
In the first quarter, MEP hosted team members from the Kenya Bird of Prey Trust (KBoPT) for an EarthRanger workshop to support their efforts to monitor raptor nest sites across the Mara. Raptors are one the most threatened species groups within the Mara, and their presence and successful breeding is a great indicators of ecosystem health. KBoPT believes that through nest monitoring, they not only help protect vulnerable raptor nest sites but can also use the data collected to inform conservation management at both local and regional levels.
The workshop established KBoPT’s EarthRanger system and created workflows for inputting data. “Nest monitoring consists of three components,” says Director of Raptor Conservation Southern Kenya Stratton Hatfield. “The first is nest detection and identification and the second is nest checks. In these two steps we hope to use EarthRanger to streamline data collection and organization.” For the third step, MEP will soon implement an Ecoscope workflow for KBoPT to analyze the data. “EarthRanger and Ecoscope are vital to the success of this work as they allow for streamlined data collection, organized database management, quick data sharing, and efficient data analysis pipelines,” says Hatfield.
In the second quarter, two software developers were engaged to build Ecoscope core features, tasks and workflows to advance functionality, and three Kenyan data scientists began their training on the use of Ecoscope to engage with conservation partners and tackle specific analytical challenges of our partner organizations. The team met with three partner conservation organizations and hosted a workshop in Amboseli to engage them in identifying the types of analytical challenges currently faced in conservation and how Ecoscope could best help the conservation community.
These meetings provided critical insights into the crafting of the project roadmap. The Wildlife Research and Training Institute (WRTI) Senior Research Scientist Steven Ndambuki attended the Ecoscope workshop in Amboseli which was a vital experience for advancing the collaboration on implementing this software.
One partner, the Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE), performed a large-scale community survey across the Amboseli ecosystem with >60 questions designed to better understand community perceptions of wildlife and identify human-elephant conflict problem areas. The data was collected using EarthRanger Mobile and an Ecoscope workflow started being developed for the analysis.
In the third quarter, significant progress in code development was made with over 64 pull reviews. The grant funds continued supporting partners ATE, KBOPT, and Save the Elephants (STE) and two new partners were introduced, Big Life Africa and the Mara Triangle. In September, the team attended the EarthRanger Training Workshop and Dr. Wall provided an update on the progress of Ecoscope, while Dr. Tiller from ATE presented the survey findings from Q2 and the plans to process the findings using Ecoscope to an audience of over 140 participants.
In August, the Ecoscope User Survey was launched. The survey was primarily sent to EarthRanger users and was included in the EarthRanger user workshops. Preliminary findings showed that of the 46 respondents that completed the survey, the majority are currently using Excel for data reporting and analysis.
In the fourth quarter, on the development side, a total of 109 issues were ‘closed’, the most per quarter in 2024. Work continued with ATE and the development of EcoMaps showed the geographical distributions of different attitudes towards elephants based on a composite metric from their community survey. Workflows were updated for KBoPT, STE, Big Life Africa and the Mara Triangle.
Three new partnerships commenced in the fourth quarter. Lion Guardians, based in Amboseli, concentrates on human-lion conflict and the team identified their three main priorities for use of the Ecoscope platform and work began. Bahari Hai, is a marine conservation organization that uses a combination of EarthRanger and SMART to monitor turtle nesting and poaching, illegal fishing activities and deforestation of mangrove habitats. Their priority for Ecoscope is an automated anti-poaching dashboard which is in the works. Finally, as the major wildlife research body in Kenya, WRTI has been a key partner since the beginning and in this quarter, their Ecoscope project launched. Three priorities have been identified, and the project will make significant progress in the new year.
As these activities continue and expand in 2025, MEP is proud to be partnering with like-minded funders to give partners an in-depth understanding of best practices in data management.
