Assessing and Certifying Indigenous Tracking Expertise and Skills

1. What they did

Commissioned by UNESCO’s Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems programme, Louis Liebenberg and nine San trackers set out how indigenous tracking knowledge can be assessed and certified. The report is credited to all ten as their collective work, and was prepared with the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee. Cooperation with knowledge holders was done with Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

The report explains why tracker certification is needed; discusses how evidence-based indigenous knowledge relates to science, and how indigenous culture changes over time; reviews challenges and lessons learned; and sets out guidelines for a Community Indigenous Tracker Certification, so communities can certify their own trackers, alongside the existing CyberTracker certification. These include definitions, scoring, evaluation protocols and principles for evaluators.

2. What they found

Why certification is needed

• As hunter-gatherer communities move to a mixed cash economy and hunt less, tracking skills are being lost. Bow-and-arrow and persistence hunting were abandoned once dogs and horses were adopted.
• About 90% of the Kalahari San Elder Trackers have died, and younger people have lacked incentives to become expert trackers.
• In the past, the success of the hunt tested a tracker’s skill. Certification now provides an objective test, plus an incentive through jobs in research, wildlife monitoring, ecotourism and anti-poaching.
• Certificates also validate the data trackers collect, by testing observer reliability.
• Formal schooling requirements keep most indigenous people in Africa out of conservation jobs, even when their knowledge of biodiversity is highly developed (from the foreword).
• Women’s knowledge of tracks and signs is often highly advanced. Some women hunt with their partners in husband-and-wife tracker teams and have been awarded the Master Tracker certificate, and some women bow-and-arrow hunters hunt alone (quoted in the foreword).

Indigenous knowledge and science

• The report distinguishes evidence-based indigenous knowledge, comparable with Western science, from spiritual beliefs, comparable with European religious beliefs. Each should be compared with its counterpart in the other culture.
• Some San trackers make this distinction themselves. Elder tracker !Namka of Bere doubted an old story about the sun because he had never heard the noise it describes.
• Indigenous knowledge is not static. The Kalahari San have adopted dogs, horses, fencing-wire arrow points and smartphones, and have taken the CyberTracker name as their own.
• In 1990, !Nate Brahman, who is pictured in the CyberTracker logo, asked Liebenberg to help create jobs for trackers. That request has been CyberTracker’s main focus.

Certification in practice

• The CyberTracker Indigenous Tracker Certification has been adopted by Kalahari San trackers in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.
• Master Trackers from Lone Tree act as external evaluators for trackers from Zutshwa. Future exchanges among the Nyae Nyae, Lone Tree and ≠Khomani trackers are planned to set standards across the Kalahari.
• The Universal Tracker Certification, open to anyone, is used in southern Africa, North America and Europe.

Community Indigenous Tracker Certification

• It is a training tool and a way to identify a community’s best trackers. Those trackers can later join the standardized CyberTracker certification if they choose.
• The Evaluator may be an Elder Tracker nominated by the community. Standards may differ between communities, but should eventually reach CyberTracker standards if the protocols are followed. Communities may invite a CyberTracker External Evaluator to assess progress.
• There are two parallel sets of modules, Track & Sign Interpretation and Trailing, at levels I to III. The highest award is the Indigenous Elder Tracker Certificate.

Track & Sign Interpretation evaluation

• Questions are rated by difficulty. 1 point: clear, complete, typical, with no similar species. 2 points: unclear or incomplete, or similar to one other species. 3 points: obscure, partial or atypical; similar to two or more species; or from a small, rare or poorly documented animal. A 3-point question is acceptable only if the Evaluator and at least 70% of the group can agree on the answer.
• Scoring rewards correct answers on difficult signs and penalizes mistakes on easy ones: 1-point questions +1 correct, −3 wrong; 2-point questions +2 correct, −2 wrong; 3-point questions +3 correct, −1 wrong.
• An evaluation has 3 unscored warm-up questions, because good trackers often miss the first question through nervousness, then 50 scored questions: 20% 1-point, 60% 2-point and 20% 3-point.
• Pass marks are 70%, 80% and 90% for levels I, II and III.
• No measuring tools, reference material or phones are allowed. Candidates may not touch or disturb anything in the question zone, and answers cannot be changed once recorded.

Trailing evaluation

• Done in varying terrain, where tracks may not be visible for 10 to 50 m or more, on an animal such as a hoofed animal, rhino or lion. A trail must be followed for at least 30 minutes to count.
• Five aspects are scored from 0 to 10, with points deducted for mistakes; the first five minutes are not penalized: (1) spoor recognition: looking 5 to 10 m ahead, moving steadily, and knowing when there are no signs; (2) spoor anticipation: reading the terrain to predict the route; (3) anticipating dangerous situations: wind direction, and knowing when animals rest; (4) alertness: seeing the animal before it sees the tracker; (5) stealth.
• At most four candidates are evaluated at once, two on the trail at a time. The second tracker can be questioned, swapped in, or called to help when the trail is lost.
• An evaluation ends at once if a candidate endangers anyone.

Tracker certificates

• Tracker I, II and III require both modules at 70%, 80% and 90%.
• Tracker II qualifies for work in ecotourism and anti-poaching; Tracker III adds ecological research.
• Each level is unlikely to be reached without at least one, two or three years of field experience.

Principles for evaluators

• Because field tests cannot be checked afterwards, the system depends on mutual respect, integrity, honesty and humility.
• An accurate field guide serves as an objective reference. Where none exists, communities are encouraged to develop one.
• Evaluations may use three steps: test each person individually; let the group discuss and record a consensus answer; only then explain the answer.
• Among San trackers, the consensus has usually been correct, even when the elders were wrong and only one younger tracker was right. Groups have improved over time until their consensus reached 100%.
• Evaluators are encouraged to attend each other’s evaluations as peer review.
• Elder Trackers are described as exceptionally skilled, intuitive, creative and humble, quick to admit mistakes. The report links this humility to Karl Popper’s view that scientific knowledge is fallible.

Challenges and lessons learned

• Sustainable funding is hard to find.
• Programmes become vulnerable when key individuals die or key facilitators leave.
• Remote financial support of trackers during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that programmes can be scaled up with more leadership from within communities.
• Interest in tracking in the USA and Europe creates income opportunities for indigenous trainers, as at the Tracking School at Klein Dobe in Nyae Nyae.
• Communities may design their own certificates with their own logos. CyberTracker, Professional Tracker, Senior Tracker and Master Tracker are registered trademarks and may not be used without permission.

3. What they concluded

• Tracking should be recognized as a specialized profession, and very high certification standards are needed to develop it as a modern profession.
• Certification recognizes indigenous knowledge, offers employment, and gives young people an incentive to revitalize tracking skills before the remaining Elder Trackers’ knowledge is lost.
• Community Indigenous Tracker Certification empowers communities to certify their own trackers. Communities can choose to keep their own system, adopt the CyberTracker standards, or combine the two.
• Critical discussion during evaluations is scientific peer review at its most basic level, and a valuable way to teach evidence-based reasoning.

4. How tracking was or was not used

This is a protocol and policy document, not a field study. It describes how Track & Sign Interpretation and Trailing are evaluated, drawing on 25 years of developing the CyberTracker Tracker Certification with Shangaan and Kalahari San trackers.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Certification is the subject of the report. It describes the Community Indigenous Tracker Certification (levels I to III and the Indigenous Elder Tracker Certificate); the CyberTracker Indigenous Tracker Certification, set by the CyberTracker Certification Standards Committee and described in a separate document; and the CyberTracker Universal Tracker Certification. Several of the co-authors are San trackers; the report names Master Trackers from Lone Tree as external evaluators.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• The CyberTracker software for smartphones lets trackers record scientific monitoring data. Certification was developed to ensure the reliability of trackers who collect data from tracks and signs.
• A Tracking Evaluation Sheet lists the indicators for each of the five trailing aspects.

7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

• Trackers can help prevent poaching of endangered species such as rhino, elephant, tigers and pangolins, and help monitor rare and endangered species.
• Locally based monitoring is especially important in developing countries. It can fill gaps in biodiversity data while empowering communities to manage their natural resources.
• Certification gives conservation managers and researchers confidence in data collected by trackers.
• Recognizing indigenous knowledge may help address the historical exclusion of indigenous peoples from conservation jobs and decision-making (from the foreword).