For years, conservation groups have relied on two leading technologies to help manage protected areas: EarthRanger, a platform for wildlife monitoring and real-time field reporting, and SMART, a conservation management software useful for logging patrol data and ranger activity. But some organizations have struggled to decide between them and even end up using both, forcing them to juggle data between two separate dashboards. Now the two platforms are merging into a single product, known as SERCA, with the goal of simplifying wildlife monitoring, patrol management and conservation data analysis. “It’s an enormous opportunity to deliver incredible tools across the entire world for conservationists,” EarthRanger director Jes Lefcourt told Mongabay. SMART was created in 2011 through a partnership between nine conservation groups looking for a more efficient way of collecting and analyzing field data in protected areas. Since its creation, the software has expanded into mobile, desktop and cloud-based components that allow organizations to record field data such as wildlife encounters, illegal activity and ranger responses during patrols. Today, the platform is used across 1,200 sites in more than 100 countries. A SMART training session in Spain. Imagine courtesy of the SMART Partnership. In Zambia, the nonprofit Zambian Carnivore Programme uses SMART to collect carnivore and herbivore data in protected areas such as South Luangwa National Park and Liuwa Plain National Park, where large carnivores face threats from habitat loss and snaring. Ecologists record group composition, hunting behavior, reproduction and interspecies dynamics of hyenas, African wild dogs, lions, leopards and cheetahs.…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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