
Community camera-trapping: an innovative way of empowering communities through conservation
One major conservation challenge is ensuring local people recognise meaningful benefits directly from wildlife presence, rather than from the presence of tourists, NGOs etc. Here, we engaged local villagers living adjacent to Ruaha National Park, and employed them to use camera-traps to monitor wildlife on their land. Each image of a wild animal generated points, with more points for more threatened and more conflict-causing species. Every 3 months, these points are translated into additional community benefits, focused on local priority areas of healthcare, education and veterinary care. This has become one of the largest drivers of local development, and is directly incentivising conservation, with villagers taking steps to protect wildlife and habitat. This improves livelihoods while reducing the major threat of conflict, which imperils lions and other species in this critically important area. This has been a successful, scalable solution, which is now being adapted and implemented in other landscapes across East Africa.