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

> What if every hour of a ranger’s work could be mapped? In Arnhem Land, the Djelk Rangers adopted CyberTracker, the icon-based software first built for animal trackers in Africa, and now record everything from buffalo culls and weed patches to ghost nets, turtle tracks and landowners’ instructions about sacred sites. Two years of their records show how the data help plan burns, report to Traditional Owners and even support prosecutions.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2011-ansell-koenig-cybertracker-integral-management-tool/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** Shaun Ansell and Jennifer Koenig
- **Year published:** 2011
- **Journal or source:** Ecological Management & Restoration
- **Full citation:** Ansell, S. and Koenig, J. 2011. CyberTracker: An integral management tool used by rangers in the Djelk Indigenous Protected Area, central Arnhem Land, Australia. Ecological Management & Restoration 12(1): 13-25.
- **DOI:** 10.1111/j.1442-8903.2011.00575.x
- **Access status:** Hosted (freely available elsewhere)
- **PDF:** https://www.originalwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/2011_Ansell_and_Koenig_cybertracker-an-integral-management-tool-used-by-rangers.pdf

## Tags

- **Species:** Humans; Reptiles > Sea turtle
- **Region:** Australia
- **Tracking:** Tracking; Tracks
- **Methods and technology:** CyberTracker; CyberTracker software; Descriptive statistics; Geographic Information System (GIS); Global Positioning System (GPS); Indigenous knowledge
- **Data type:** New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Not reported
- **Discipline:** Human dimensions; Indigenous knowledge
- **Year published:** 2011

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: humans (the Djelk Rangers, Indigenous land, sea and women’s rangers, and how they record their work). Recorded by the rangers but not studied: water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), 669 culled in 2008-2009 and 622 in 2009-2010, including 110 shot from a helicopter; cattle (Bos spp.), named with buffalo as feral animals that are important food for landowners; live sea turtles, turtle tracks and turtle nests; live dugongs; dead animals; fish kills; crocodile trapping; barramundi (Lates calcarifer) and mud crab (Scylla serrata) as the targets of commercial fishing boats. Weeds treated: 25 named weed species plus an unknown water weed (Table 2), mainly mission grass (Pennisetum polystachion) and hyptis (Hyptis suaveolens), and the noxious mimosa (Mimosa pigra).
- **Location and habitat:** Djelk Indigenous Protected Area (IPA), 6732.2 km² of Aboriginal inalienable freehold land in central northern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Djelk and landowner groups work over about 14,000 km² (the IPA plus surrounding land and sea). The rangers are based in Maningrida, with over 30 outstations in the region. Habitats: coastal and sub-coastal land and seascapes, islands, estuaries, wetlands, rivers, monsoon rainforests, tropical savannas and sandstone escarpments; the Arnhem Land Plateau (a burn line, Figure 10); freshwater springs and stone country billabongs, including a spring system in the upper Cadel River (buffalo culls, Figure 11). The weed trial was in West Arnhem Land.
- **Topics:** Indigenous ranger programmes; Indigenous Protected Areas; land and sea management; CyberTracker data applications (sequences) designed by rangers; icon-based data recording for low literacy; geo-referenced records of all ranger work; weed management; prescribed burning and fire fighting; aerial incendiary burning (R2 Raindance machine); feral animal control; coastal surveillance and fisheries compliance; marine debris and ghost nets (abandoned fishing nets); cultural site protection and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK); seasonality of work; reporting to Traditional Owners, funders and partners; fire abatement and carbon (West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement, WALFA); payment for environmental services; prosecutions; regional data sharing (the I-Tracker project); underestimation of effort during the learning phase.
- **Statistics or models:** Descriptive statistics only: counts, percentages, means ± one standard error and ranges, calculated with CyberTracker’s reporting functions and Microsoft Excel. No hypothesis testing. Buffalo removals compared with an earlier aerial survey estimate (11,133 ± 1260 buffalo over 5880 km², Koenig et al. 2003). Possible inconsistencies: (1) weed infestation sizes are given as “0-20; 20-50; and 50-100 individuals”, but the next sentences treat them as diameters in metres; (2) the ghost net percentages for 2008-2009 (37.6%, 36.7%, 25.7%) fit 109 nets, while the text gives 110; (3) culls of 669 plus 622 buffalo are about 11.6% of the 11,133 estimate, while the authors say “up to 10%” (the estimate covers 5880 km², and the cull area is not given); (4) Table 4 gives a range of 0 to 22 staff per day in 2009-2010, a minimum of zero on a recorded working day; (5) Table 2 lists 699 weed infestations treated in 2009-2010, while the text gives 650 weed control events.
- **Data type:** New field data: all records in the three Djelk CyberTracker databases for two financial years, 1 July 2008 to 30 June 2010 (the Raindance machine only from 2010; cultural sites only from April 2010). Records were collected by the rangers during their daily work, not for a separate study. The rangers began using CyberTracker in 2007 (marine turtle sightings, December 2007; weed trial, March 2008).

## Synopsis

### 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.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The paper shows a tool built for non-literate animal trackers in Africa carried into a very different setting, where the same icon-based design lets Indigenous rangers record a whole working life on country, from weeds to sacred sites.

- The turtle track and nest counts sit in the same database as boat sightings and debris, which shows how tracks and signs records can become part of routine patrol data. Because no species or identification method is given, these counts say more about patrol effort than about turtles; the authors’ own point about records rising as rangers grow confident applies to them too.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: CyberTracker: An integral management tool used by rangers in the Djelk Indigenous Protected Area, central Arnhem Land, Australia (Ansell and Koenig, 2011). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2011-ansell-koenig-cybertracker-integral-management-tool/