Using citizen science to track illegal wildlife trade in the Himalayas
Using citizen science to track illegal wildlife trade in the Himalayas
TV Padma
January 21, 2022
See link
https://india.mongabay.com/2022/01/using-citizen-science-to-track-illegal-wildlife-trade-in-the-himalayas/
for photos.
Citizen apps that help residents collect data, usually with smartphones,
could help plug information gaps and track illegal wildlife trade in the
biodiversity-rich Himalayas, a new paper says.
Investments in citizen reporting tools could provide crucial data on the
status of species and trade of their commercial products, a report by
scientists from Kumaon University in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand and
the University of Sydney, in the journal Trees, Forests and People says.
The ecologically-rich Himalayas are “particularly susceptible to
biodiversity loss” because of their vulnerability to climate change and
natural hazards and a fragmented system of governance across multiple
boundaries within and outside the countries that form part of the mountain
chain, the report says.
Citizen reporting tools could help share information on wildlife and
improve management of wildlife trade, it says. noting that, “Investment in
citizen reporting tools could improve the availability of data on the
status of existing species’ populations and trade of their commercial
product.”
The new paper “makes a very strong and cogent case. The authors are also
very realistic in highlighting the challenges in using the apps,” Kamal
Bawa, president of Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and
the Environment (ATREE) and distinguished professor emeritus at the
University of Massachusetts, Boston, told Mongabay-India. “Apps are needed
to benefit people for nature-based livelihoods and heal our planet,” he
says.
Citizen scientists use the ubiquitous smartphone to record visual, audio,
and geographical information precisely. While citizens’ efforts to gather
data are voluntary and unpaid, they often record the unusual, and
professional researchers oversee and analyse the data.
This arrangement enables researchers to collect large volumes of data at a
low cost while also engaging the public in science-related issues. Several
such citizen apps exist, some working in tandem with scientific
institutions. For example, the Plantix app, which enables farmers to
identify crop diseases, enlisted the help of Indian agronomists to build
its initial image database and train the app’s deep neural network.
Meanwhile, the iNaturalist app’s data goes into the Global Biodiversity
Information Facility.
Other popular dedicated apps include iSpot, CitSci, Cybertracker and eBird,
but postings to social media apps can also be mined via their metadata.
eBird became the world’s largest citizen science community, in which bird
migrations are traced across continents
The iBats app monitors bat calls, while Leafsnap tracks leaves of trees.
Wildlife Trafficking in the Himalayas
India is making efforts to curb wildlife crime. In March 2021, the Wildlife
Institute of India, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau and TRAFFIC conducted
training sessions for wildlife enforcement agency officials to stop
wildlife trafficking across the Himalayas.
The biodiversity-rich Himalayas account for nearly half (50%) of India’s
flowering plants and birds; and almost two-thirds (65%) of the mammalian
species; more than a third of the country’s reptiles (35%) and amphibians
(36%) and 17% fishes.
The skin, bones, and body parts of the snow leopard and common leopard;
gall bladder of the Himalayan brown bear and Asiatic black bear; musk pods
of various species of musk deer, the fur of wolves and leopards; as well as
various pheasants such as the Western tragopan and the Himalayan monal are
some of the commonly illegally trafficked items from the Himalayas.
In 2019 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reported that in
India, illegal wildlife trade is “expanding rapidly, driven by demand for
rare species – headed for the pet market – as well as for species believed
to have medicinal properties.” It says that the main consumer markets are
China and South East Asia, but live animals or their parts are also
smuggled to the Gulf, Europe and Northern America. Beyond India, the main
transit countries are Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, the
UNEP report says.
According to the UNEP, Indian wildlife species and products commonly
smuggled out include tiger and leopard skins, their bones and other body
parts, rhino horns and ivory. Turtles and tortoises, sea horses, snake
venom, mongoose hair, snake skins, tokay gecko, sea cucumber, chiru fleece,
musk pods, bear bile, medicinal plants, red sanders timber and caged birds
such as parakeets, and mynas are also smuggled out.
The 2020 World Wildlife Crime Report found that along with threatening
endangered species, wildlife crimes and exploitation of nature can promote
climate change as well as negatively impact public health because of
zoonotic disease transmissions.
The new report on citizen apps says that better data will help identify
complicit communities and links to illegal trade. For the app to be viable,
data collection must be multilingual, adaptive to different trade
structures across communities, and relevant to different ecological biomes.
Citizen science is not new, per se, says Rahul Kaul, director of Wildlife
Trust of India, Noida, Uttar Pradesh. U.K.-based organisations have been
using citizens to count common bird species for a few decades now, says
Kaul. “It was done manually then, but now there is perhaps an app where you
put in your information.”
India too has several citizen science initiatives, he points out. For
example, mid-winter waterfowl count was a sort of a countrywide citizen
science-based estimate, but which was coordinated by a few ground-based
people using a larger group of people.
“With this being online now, great possibilities have opened up,” says
Kaul. “We already see the use of eBird where users can log in their
information and the information appears alongside the information provided
by a multitude of users. Of course, the content is verified to the best
extent possible, so this large data pool becomes usable. This can transcend
political boundaries, and one can see real-time movements and distributions
etc.”
Many citizen science projects have commenced in Asian countries too, and
some include data from the Himalayan region, the report’s authors says.
“However, to our knowledge, there is no project aimed at documenting the
trade of endangered Himalayan species,” they say.
Several Indian projects monitor Himalayan biodiversity. The Wildlife
Institute of India’s Wildlife Watch in the Indian Himalayan Region improves
community awareness of ecologically and socio-economically important
species.
The report also cites the example of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)’s
training of Nepalese volunteers by providing them with basic data
collection equipment such as GPS receivers. The WWF and the Nepalese
government also set up a project ‘Cyber Tracker,’ to monitor Himalayan snow
leopards. The project is developing simple computers for local people to
use alongside mobile phones to monitor snow leopards, their prey, and their
habitat.
In China, the Shan Shui’s China Nature Watch project gained community
support for wildlife protection and has helped introduce more stringent
laws. China Watch engages individuals and social organizations via WeChat
(a social network) to share wildlife sightings.
App Potential
Bawa and Kaul see the immense future potential of such apps.
Several groups are active in collaborating on e-platforms, Kaul points out.
“Campaigns can take the form of the ones on social media and not
necessarily in this form, but yes, this is a very convenient medium to
reach out to a large number of people and get your message across.”
Volunteers are also getting together to track the sale of illegal wildlife
trade on the internet. So citizens are collaborating to spend their time
tracking wildlife sale offers and recording these for further action. This
way, the movement of illegal wildlife goods can be tracked across borders.
Bawa offers several ideas to take the concept of citizen apps forward. He
says that one could develop apps for wildlife trade and other conservation
and environmental issues, including agriculture and public health.
He adds that one could also have additional features on the app for
wildlife trade. For example, the wildlife trade is associated with the
emergence of infectious diseases, and hence, an app that combines
surveillance for zoonotic diseases could be beneficial.
One would need a platform to host the data, synthesise it, and add
additional features, Bawa suggests, which would require collaboration with
entities that have such platforms. The India Biodiversity Portal is one
such platform, but many others exist for agriculture, water, and various
socio-environmental parameters.
More investments need to be made in these platforms and generally in
digital infrastructure for the environment and sustainability and in
creating collaborative networks to develop and promote apps. “We have made
this case in a roadmap for a potential National Mission on Biodiversity and
Human Wellbeing which integrates biodiversity, ecosystem services, climate
change, agriculture, health, bio-economy and capacity building in
biodiversity science. With the widespread use of cell phones and the urgent
need for data, the possibilities are endless,” says Bawa. India, “with its
vast capacity in information technology and severe environmental
challenges, has the potential to be a global leader in this area.”