Monitoring and Evaluation

Effective monitoring and evaluation, as well as driving policy change based on our results, helps ensure that our programs make a lasting difference.

Our Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, and Adaptation (MELA) team members are more than just data wizards. They are social science sleuths digging deep to understand the real impact of our work with local communities and tech-forward biologists aggregating information about human-wildlife conflict and critical habitat to drive decision-making across our conservation landscapes.

Driven By Science To Uncover Impact

In the Greater Lake Natron landscape, we continue to track trends in community wellbeing through annual surveys conducted by locally trained enumerators. This long-term dataset, launched in 2022, provides valuable insights into the social impact of conservation efforts. We also recently completed the final evaluation of the Land for Life project using the SAGE (Site-level Assessment of Governance and Equity) tool. Through multi-day workshops, community members assessed how well local governance reflects principles of equity and civil liberties.

Meanwhile, in the Greater Serengeti, our MELA team is preparing to run its first human-elephant coexistence (HEC) tolerance survey. Newly trained community enumerators will help us understand how attitudes toward elephants differ between long-term program villages and newly engaged ones, informing more responsive, data-driven coexistence strategies.

Mobile Technologies Improve Performance

Our field teams across northern Tanzania utilize mobile technologies like Cybertracker, the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART), Survey123, and Collector for ArcGIS to collect and share real-time data to a cloud-based server.

The Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, and Adaptation team then uses the ArcGIS platform to clean, analyze, and share the data, allowing us to respond to conflict, measure trends over time, and adapt our programs to changing conditions on the ground. Read more about the role of GIS and mobile data collection in our post for the Esri Conservation Blog.

Going Big on Data Collection

What does it take to power programs in new landscapes? The MELA team works diligently to prepare for influxes of data as programs come online in new landscapes, like the most recent additions of Ngorongoro, Mkomazi, and Mikumi.
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We're able to build on considerable experience monitoring human-wildlife conflict in other landscapes in addition to collaborating with partners across Africa to design data collection tools. Using a suite of Esri products, the team is particularly focused on collecting and sharing human-elephant conflict data as part of our efforts to promote coexistence in villages around the Ngorongoro Conservation Area as well as Greater Mkomazi.

Common Ground for Conservation Technology

With the support of the Lion Recovery Fund and additional partners, APW established two Conservation Technology Centers (CTCs) in the Tarangire-Manyara landscape and has plans to open them in new areas, too. Fully equipped with internet, utilities, furniture, and large format monitors for data visualization, CTCs serve as forums to facilitate community and village government discussions on environmental issues.

Thanks to Esri technology, data collected by Warriors for Wildlife and community rangeland monitors can be viewed as ArcGIS Dashboards and discussed among village grazing committees, pastoralists, and protected area managers – providing a platform for evidence-based land management.

We are proud to see Conservation Technology Centers serving as meeting places where leadership and pastoralists come together to discuss challenges and create action plans for conflict mitigation, climate change adaptation, and other environmental issues. Even without staff present, the CTCs strengthen relationships between communities and government.

Elizabeth Naro, Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning & Adaptation