EarthRanger
I'm proud to share this article in Methods in Ecology and Evolution on EarthRanger: An open-source platform for ecosystem monitoring, research, and management." In 2014, I began a journey in conservation technology that led to the launch of EarthRanger. I am deeply grateful to Jake Wall, whose vision and work were the foundation of what grew into EarthRanger and now beyond. Every single author listed had an essential role in the success of EarthRanger. I want to call out Kathleen Gobush, my colleague who shaped the proposal with me and taught me all I know about conservation. She was instrumental in getting the program funded and launched. Chris Jones, Chris Doehring, Dennis Schneider, Karen Goodfellow, and Jordan Steward were there from the very first day and continue to be the heart of the program. Jes Lefcourt and Bruce Jones, your leadership and commitment to conservation, in general, and to EarthRanger specifically, are profound and priceless.
This article is a distillation in peer-reviewed literature of what EarthRanger is, what problems it solves, what impact it has had, and the ongoing growth of that impact.
I'm at a point in my career where I start to look back (while still looking forward), and EarthRanger is the most important thing I have ever done professionally. It is also a testament to what good people with a vision and a shared mission to make the world a little bit better can achieve despite the mountains and valleys blocking the way.
Hundreds of parks worldwide now use EarthRanger to protect wildlife and the communities that live near them. An interactive map of locations is regularly updated with new locations. It is used in ways I never dreamed it would be, such as locust management and management of Asian gypsy moth devastation in Mongolia.
Its primary uses are park security, logistics, mitigating human-wildlife conflict, and ecological management. The EarthRanger user conference is a forum for park managers to share best practices, learn about the latest technology, and build community. It was one of the happy, unexpected, positive impacts of EarthRanger. I could say much more about what EarthRanger is and why it is impactful, but the EarthRanger website tells that story very well.
The About Us page of the EarthRanger website briefly describes the inception of EarthRanger, which arose from a desire to do something after counting the massive decline in elephant populations as part of the Great Elephant Census, the first conservation project I worked on. I will tell more of my story of taking EarthRanger from an idea to an impactful product used by thousands of park rangers and management daily in small, hopefully interesting, posts over time.