The traditional artwork of animal monitoring, honed and perfected by indigenous communities over 1000’s of years, stands as a testomony to the fragile stability between humanity and nature. Indigenous trackers possess unparalleled abilities, developed over millennia, to interpret delicate indicators within the surroundings. This experience has been important for survival, enabling hunters to comply with prey throughout huge landscapes and anticipate modifications within the surroundings.
Rolex Awards for Enterprise Laureate Louis Liebenberg, has devoted his life to preserving this artwork, whereas guaranteeing that its custodians, the indigenous trackers of the Kalahari Desert, discover new alternatives in a quickly altering world. By way of his revolutionary CyberTracker software program, Liebenberg has not solely safeguarded a convention, but additionally created a robust device for world conservation efforts.
THE GENESIS OF A LIFELONG PASSION
Liebenberg’s fascination with monitoring started throughout a childhood recreation of hide-and-seek on the dunes of a Cape City seaside. At simply 4 years previous, he adopted footprints within the sand to find his pal’s hiding place. “I can nonetheless vividly bear in mind following the sequence of footprints over the crest of the dune, proper to the place this boy was hiding,” he recollects. “I even bear in mind the shock on his face. That’s my first visceral reminiscence of monitoring any individual.” This straightforward but profound second sparked a lifelong ardour for the tales that nature may inform.
Years later, at age 25, Liebenberg ventured alone into Namibia’s Kalahari Desert to stick with the native peoples of the area, the Ju/’hoansi. Right here, he discovered the traditional talent of monitoring from those that had relied on it for his or her survival for 1000’s of years. It was this work that drove Liebenberg to create CyberTracker.
Liebenberg’s ties to the Ju/’hoansi neighborhood run deep. In 1990, his shut pal and expert tracker, !Nate, urged him to assist the individuals of the Kalahari, who confronted mounting challenges as a result of dwindling wildlife numbers and restrictive land insurance policies. A lot of the area’s biodiversity had been decimated by fences that had lower off conventional migration routes for animals, disrupting the fragile ecological stability. This meant that the Ju/’hoansi may now not maintain their nomadic, subsistence life-style. The disaster highlighted the urgency of preserving their monitoring abilities, which had been prone to fading away, as youthful generations had been compelled to depart their properties and ancestral teachings behind looking for usually low-paid, low-skilled work in city areas to outlive.
Liebenberg started to formulate a plan. He reasoned that the exceptional monitoring abilities of the indigenous inhabitants could possibly be developed into a contemporary occupation, gathering data for conservation tasks. In 1994, he started certifying the talents of indigenous trackers to assist them safe employment by giving an goal measure of their abilities.
Recognising the necessity to act, Liebenberg envisioned a strategy to bridge the hole between historic monitoring experience and trendy know-how. This led to the creation of CyberTracker in 1997 that ran on GPS methods, palm pilots, Android and iPhones. Certainly one of its standout options was its skill to harness indigenous information for conservation functions. Licensed trackers, geared up with CyberTracker, present detailed insights into species and ecosystems that far surpass tech-based imaging applied sciences. This depth of understanding has confirmed invaluable in creating correct conservation fashions and defending biodiversity. “Until you could have individuals on the bottom with actual area abilities that may really make actual observations of actual species, your fashions could possibly be fully fallacious,” Liebenberg elaborates.
GLOBAL IMPACT
Supported by the celebrated Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1998, CyberTracker catapulted onto the worldwide stage, incomes widespread recognition and attaining exceptional acclaim. “The Rolex Award itself performed a crucial position within the subsequent success of CyberTracker, as a result of with out it, no person would have recognized about us,” Liebenberg recollects. Since then, the software program has been downloaded greater than 600,000 occasions in over 200 nations. CyberTracker has turn into a useful device for wildlife conservation, aiding within the safety of species starting from rhinos to butterflies. Its versatility even prolonged its purposes to citizen science, training, farming, social and well being surveys, catastrophe reduction, and crime prevention.
Greater than 25 years after its inception, CyberTracker continues to evolve. Liebenberg is presently testing CyberTracker On-line, an up to date app-based model that makes it accessible to everybody, from illiterate elders in distant communities to 10-year-old youngsters. The brand new, easy-to-use platform places monitoring science in everybody’s fingers, consolidating the core parts of CyberTracker and permitting customers to construct customized apps tailor-made to their particular work. This new strategy to the software program that CyberTracker On-line provides will make growing tasks extremely easy for anybody with a smartphone and entry to a pc.
Knowledge might be collected offline and uploaded as soon as web connectivity is out there, enabling trackers to seamlessly share their findings with a centralised world database. This ensures helpful monitoring information might be accessed and utilised for a variety of conservation efforts and past.
“It creates the opportunity of real-time monitoring of advanced ecosystems on a worldwide foundation,” says Liebenberg, “and it offers a stream of economic help for indigenous communities.” He emphasises that sustainable socio-economic fashions are important as they allow native populations to actively take part in biodiversity conservation – a crucial step in tackling the results of local weather change.
CyberTracker On-line has already been picked up by citizen scientists worldwide, together with tasks that get youngsters out into nature. Initiatives like ToadNUTS, which protects the Western Leopard Toad in Cape City, and BioKids in Michigan, which teaches youngsters scientific reasoning, exemplify the software program’s versatility. These tasks not solely foster environmental stewardship, but additionally encourage the subsequent era of conservationists.
PASSING THE TORCH
Past know-how, Liebenberg continues to coach new trackers on the Ju/’hoan San Tracker College within the Kalahari, which sees college students from so far as North America and Europe. Combining indigenous information and abilities with trendy science and know-how, the college goals to revive indigenous monitoring on a world scale.
For Liebenberg, monitoring is greater than a talent, explaining: “The artwork of monitoring is the perfect manner of introducing scientific reasoning and understanding to youngsters. There’s no mediation, no microscope, telescope, books or something that comes between you and the tracks. It’s very speedy.”
TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE TOGETHER
The launch of CyberTracker On-line aligns with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, a dedication to supporting people and organisations addressing right this moment’s environmental challenges. Established in 2019, the Perpetual Planet Initiative builds on practically a century of Rolex’s custom of championing exploration. Initially centered on the Rolex Awards for Enterprise and partnerships equivalent to Mission Blue and the Nationwide Geographic Society, the initiative has expanded to incorporate over 20 collaborations. These embrace tasks like Rewilding Argentina, Coral Gardeners, and Steve Boyes’ explorations of Africa’s river basins.
By way of scholarships, grants, and partnerships, the initiative fosters the subsequent era of explorers and scientists. By making monitoring science accessible to everybody, Liebenberg empowers communities to contribute to conservation efforts and fight local weather change. With options like story maps that mix information with photographs and movies, the brand new software program makes scientific data accessible to all, from main faculty college students to PhD researchers. This inclusivity ensures that everybody can play a job in defending their native surroundings and, by extension, the planet.
Whereas Liebenberg’s personal monitoring profession stretches again greater than 40 years, his work is much from over. “The considered not doing this work has simply not occurred to me. I’ve obtained no intention of stopping, as a result of there’s simply a lot extra to be taught,” he says. Together with his unwavering dedication and the continued help of Rolex, Liebenberg is guaranteeing that the traditional artwork of monitoring not solely survives, however thrives within the trendy world.
This story was first seen on WOW #76 Spring 2025 Problem
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