From: Huffington Post
IFAW’s tenBoma initiative aims to predict and prevent a poacher’s next strike.
Azzedine Downes, Contributor President & CEO International Fund for Animal Welfare
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Many of us in the conservation world were thrown off track early on by focusing on the product rather than the network that moves that product. We talked, for example, about stopping elephant poaching, rhino poaching and the illegal trade in birds, but focusing on any one animal blinded us to the reality that there are sophisticated criminal networks orchestrating the widespread killing of wildlife across the globe. The network that moves ivory from Africa is the same network that can move illegal charcoal, cigarettes, stolen pharmaceuticals and sex slaves. It takes large sums of money and a vast communications network. The truth is that if these criminals were not moving ivory, they would simply turn to moving another product, such as arms or drugs.
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There is much attention given to the use of technology in the effort to provide wildlife security. Technology in and of itself will not lead to the destruction of criminal networks. The realization that technology can help us map the criminal networks that are wreaking destruction, literally plundering the planet, is what is new to the fight to protect wildlife. IFAW’s tenBoma project, launched in Kenya, brings together technology and communities to map wildlife crime so that patterns of criminal behavior emerge and can, therefore, be disrupted. Our goal is to increase the amount of information shared, analyze that information and turn it into actionable intelligence. In other words, we want to stop the criminals before they kill, not just chase them down once they have killed.
