CyberTracker: An integral management tool used by rangers in the Djelk Indigenous Protected Area, central Arnhem Land, Australia

1. What they did

Indigenous ranger groups in northern Australia look after vast areas of Aboriginal land and sea. They need a way to record their many kinds of work for their own planning, for the Traditional Owners who must understand and consent to work on their country, and for the government agencies and partners who fund them. This paper, written by the former manager of the Djelk Rangers and a research fellow, describes how the Djelk Rangers of central Arnhem Land came to record all of their work with CyberTracker.

CyberTracker is free software first developed in the 1990s so that animal trackers in Africa, including trackers who could not read or write, could record what they saw using a touch screen with symbols and icons. The authors describe:

• Getting started (2007 to 2008). After other ranger groups had dropped the software because the handheld units of the time broke in the field, Djelk bought three rugged Trimble Nomad handheld computers. They first built a CyberTracker application for marine turtle sightings (December 2007), then turned a paper weed data sheet into a CyberTracker application and trialled it for a month (March 2008). Within months they had applications for all their land and sea work.
• The set-up. The rangers now run 14 handheld units, with chargers and mounts on most boats, cars and quad bikes. All units are synchronised to one office computer, and the data can be exported as spreadsheets or map files.
• Their three applications. The Land Ranger application (weeds, burning, fire fighting, feral animal control and cultural sites, where senior landowners are interviewed with the voice recorder), the Sea Ranger application (boat sightings, turtles and dugongs, turtle tracks and nests, marine debris, crab pots, fish kills and more), and an application that records data from the R2 Raindance machine, which drops incendiary capsules from a helicopter for prescribed burning.
• Two years of records. They analysed every record from 1 July 2008 to 30 June 2010 to describe what the rangers did, when, where and with what effort.

2. What they found

How the rangers spent their time (Table 1)

• Coastal surveillance took the most effort (41.8% of activity days), then weed management (19.7%), prescribed burning (17.7%) and marine debris patrols (12.5%).
• The average number of activities per day rose from 1.49 ± 0.05 to 1.88 ± 0.06 between the two years.
• Weed work was mainly done in the wet season (January to April), and prescribed burning early in the dry season (May to July). Coastal and marine debris patrols ran fairly evenly through the year, and feral animal control fitted in around other work.

Weeds

• In 2009-2010 the rangers recorded well over 1000 weed activities (419 surveys and 650 control events) at 25 outstations and in Maningrida.
• They treated 25 weed species; grasses made up 55.4% of controlled infestations. Mission grass was by far the most common.
• Most infestations were treated before large-scale seeding. All recorded mimosa patches were under 20 m across.

Fire

• Prescribed burning covered 9518 linear km in 2008-2009 and 17,368 linear km in 2009-2010 (719 person hours in the second year).
• In 2010 the Raindance machine flew 10 days, travelled 4342 km and dropped 40,398 capsules, with the location of every capsule recorded.

Feral animals

• Culls were aimed at sensitive sites, such as freshwater springs and stone country billabongs, that buffalo damage.
• The rangers removed 669 buffalo in 2008-2009 and 622 the next year. The authors suggest up to 10% of the buffalo population may have been removed.

Cultural sites

• Since April 2010, 21 cultural sites have been recorded. Voice recordings are transcribed and added to the field maps.

Coastal surveillance and marine debris (Table 3)

• Of boats sighted in 2009-2010, 78% were commercial fishing boats, mostly barramundi fishers.
• The rangers recorded 1577 pieces of marine debris in 2008-2009 and 1067 in 2009-2010. In the second year, 78.4% was rubbish, and almost all of it (99.6%) was picked up and taken to the dump or burnt. Most household rubbish was local, while most commercial rubbish was of foreign origin.
• Ghost net sightings fell from 110 to 32.
• Turtle tracks found fell from 43 to 19, turtle nests from 40 to 1, and live turtle sightings from 32 to 6.

People and effort (Table 4)

• 53 staff were recorded over 401 working days. Working days, teams and staff per day, time spent and distance travelled were all higher in the second year (for example, land rangers travelled 14,425 km and then 37,636 km).

Uses of the data

• Activity maps are taken to twice-yearly landowner meetings so each clan can see the work on their estate.
• Funders receive quarterly reports, and data feed into fire and carbon research (WALFA).
• Sea patrol records have supported several successful prosecutions.

Limitations

• The data underestimate effort: maintenance, administration and meetings are not recorded; side tasks such as cultural site monitoring were rarely logged; and often only the unit’s operator was entered as staff.
• Most numbers were higher in the second year although ranger work probably did not change much, which the authors read as the rangers using CyberTracker more as they grew confident with it.

3. What they concluded

• CyberTracker has become an efficient, cost-effective, user-friendly and versatile tool for the Djelk Rangers, and an integral part of their daily work.
• Its success rests on three things: the software itself (free, fully customisable, icon-based); the “bottom up” approach, in which the rangers helped design the questions and how they are asked; and support from the software’s developers, the CyberTracker reference group and partners such as the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA).
• Like any method, it needs well-designed, relevant questions, and people must carry the units and actually use them.
• Recording landowners’ instructions about cultural sites is one of the most innovative parts of Djelk’s use, because it brings Indigenous Ecological Knowledge into managing country.
• Locally, CyberTracker lets landowners and rangers engage more fully with partners and use their skills in a way that low literacy levels previously did not allow. Regionally and nationally, the same applications used in many places let data such as ghost net counts be combined across northern Australia.
• The authors expect that such data, gathered across Australia, will show the very large contribution Indigenous Australians make to managing the country’s land and sea.

4. How tracking was or was not used

The paper is about recording ranger work, not about tracking animals. The only tracks and signs reported are the turtle tracks and turtle nests that Sea Rangers recorded on patrol (43 and 40 in 2008-2009; 19 and 1 in 2009-2010). The paper does not say how tracks or nests were identified or to which turtle species they belonged. CyberTracker’s “track timer” records the ranger’s own route, not animal tracks.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Not reported. No training standard, test or certification of the rangers’ identification skills is described. The senior author trained staff in using CyberTracker and gave them daily feedback.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• Trimble Nomad TDS800LC rugged handheld computers with built-in GPS, camera and microphone, waterproof and dustproof, with 14-hour batteries and 12 V charging in vehicles and boats.
• CyberTracker sequences that branch from screen to screen, mixing pictures, option lists, check boxes, numbers, text, voice and photographs.
• A custom CyberTracker control, written by the software developer Justin Steventon, that geo-references the status output of the R2 Raindance aerial incendiary machine, including every capsule dropped.
• Data exported as map files and shown alongside satellite fire scars and hotspots on the North Australian Fire Information (NAFI) website.
• Voice recordings of senior landowners about sacred sites, transcribed and added to field maps used in planning and during burning.

7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

• Mapped, geo-referenced records let rangers, landowners and partners check work against management goals, follow up treatments (such as mimosa sites) and adjust the work programme.
• Landowners can see exactly how many feral animals are removed and from where, which helps balance culling against keeping buffalo and cattle available for customary harvesters.
• Quantitative records give funders confidence and could open the way to more payment for environmental services agreements.
• Using one method across many ranger groups lets regional problems, such as ghost nets and marine debris, be measured along much of the north Australian coast.