African People & Wildlife’s Sustainable Rangelands Initiative keeps grasslands open and flourishing for the long-term benefit of rural communities and wildlife. Taking a holistic, community-driven approach, our team trains and deploys community habitat monitors and collaborates with village leadership to restore vital habitat.

Through monthly data collection, habitat monitors use state-of-the-art mobile technology to provide updates on pasture quality to natural resource decision-makers in their communities. A suite of customized Esri geo-spatial applications and tools, including Survey123, ArcGIS Dashboards, and ArcGIS Hub, have been designed by the APW team to generate a long-term pasture quality dataset. This invaluable dataset streams in real-time into culturally relevant visualization tools that inform conservation interventions. Results including increased grass height, increased vegetation cover, and the reduction of invasive and problematic plant species have been observed in these community-managed grazing areas.