MalaysiaGIS.com

Source: In-Tech, The Star

When you're hanging on for dear life to a nearly vertical slope slippery with mud and a backpack that weighs in access of 15kg, you tend to think of rather strange things. For me, my mind wandered to the Indian curry meal I was going to have when I got home... IF I got home, that is.

So, how did I end up here, braving leeches, sandflies, horseflies, skin infections, blisters and trekking more than 22km on this day (and more than 60km in total) in the jungles of Sabah?

Believe it or not, I was on assignment for Tech.Plus, chasing the elusive Sumatran Rhino, a critically endangered animal of which only 300 are believed to be left in the world.

In fact, this rather low-tech pursuit on foot has been the test bed for some rather high-tech equipment. You see, conservationists and rangers here have been using the Handspring Visor together with GPS (Global Positioning System) Springboard units to aid in the conservation of these Rhinos.

The place is Tabin, a 1,200 sq km wildlife reserve (twice the size of Singapore) nestled rather strangely, smack in the middle of an oil palm plantation - how's that for striking a balance?

So here it is, folks, and don't say we don't go to the ends of the earth for you!

Call for Conservation
The Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus Sumatrensis) is smaller than the more well-known African Rhino, but unlike its counsins, the Sumatran Rhino lives in thick, near impenetrable rainforest, and is rarely seen.

Thick forest also makes it extremely difficult for researchers to get a reliable estimate on the actual number of these animals in the wild, though 300 in the world is a fair guess.

The sub-species found in Tabin, Dicerorhinus Sumatrensis Harrissoni is unique to Sabah - the main difference is that it is smaller than the regular Sumatran Rhino. Only 30 of these sub-species are believed to be left in the wild.

At the current rate that the Sumatran Rhino is disappearing, it is estimated that unless something is done, these creatures will be extinct in 10 years.

Zoos with specimens of these animals have been trying captive breeding programmes since the late 1800s and so far only one Sumatran Rhino has ever been successfully born, in the Cincinnati zoo in September 2001.

"The main problem with breeding Sumatran Rhinos in capativity is that so little is known about the breeding cycle in their natural habitat - for example, eating certain leaves could help maintain the female's pregnancy and ability to carry to full term. On top of that, their reproductive window - the time that the female is in heat - is very small," says Tan Kit Sun, conservation curator for the Singapore Zoo.

With captive breeding being difficult, most conservationists believe that the best course of action to ensure the survival of the Sumatran Rhino is to preserve the natural habitat that the animal lives in.

Hurdles to cross
To initiate any serious effort at conservation, the number of animals and its habits in the wild need to be correctly catalogued and statistical information obtained. This information is important to find out if there is a viable population of animals and if so what measures can be taken to ensure that they flourish.

Traditionally, this is done by sheer legwork - trekking into the forest, trying to catch sightings of the animals themselves or, more likely, combing the ground for traces of footprints and dung. Information obtained will then be recorded into little logbooks, noting down the time and place and other relevant data.

These days, GPS units are also used to help researchers accurately record the location of tracks, giving them a clearer idea of the movements and habits of the animals in the wild. This information is then brought back to headquarters and then manually entered into the PC to collate and analyse the data.

These days, GPS units are also used to help researchers accurately record the location of tracks, giving them a clearer idea of the movements and habits of the animals in the wild. This information is then brought back to headquarters and then manually entered into the PC to collate and analyse the data.

Enter Dr Annelisa Kilbourn, one of the main people involved in the Sumatran Rhino conservation project in the Tabin Wildlife Reserve. Since June 2000, Kilbourn, who holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine, has been a resident in a small corner of Tabin, working to obtain more data on the rhino their natural habitat to aid in their conservation.

Kilbourn, a tall woman whose serious-looking faces hides a wicked sense of humour and a penchant for dancing, was instrumental in introducing the use of the Handspring Visors and the CyberTracker software in Tabin.

"The challenges of the habitat in Tabin is that you've got a lot of people working with you who have different skill levels and the vegetation is so dense that you're doing a lot of track identification versus actual animal identification," explains Dr Kilbourn.

The main problem she faced was that most of the local rangers, the ones most familiar with the terrain and the animals, had different levels of IT knowledge, thus ruling out more complicated methods of data collection.

The idea was therefore to create a system which was sophisticated and customisable enough to enable researchers to record as much data as possible and yet be simple enough for the technologically-challenged.

The CyberTracker
Though usually called just "The CyberTracker" by the rangers, the system used in Tabin is actually a combination of a number of products, namely the basic Handspring Visor Deluxe handheld computer, a GPS Springboard module from well-known GPS maker, Magellan, and the CyberTracker software (www.CyberTracker.org).

Originally created for tracking packages, the people who created the CyberTracker software realised that the application could easily be customised for a number of uses, like stock-taking, farming and of course, tracking wildlife.

The software is freely downloadable from the CyberTracker website or from www.palmgear.com and is free to use for non-profit organisations.

Kilbourn came across the software while she was working on a project in Central Africa, where the rangers there were given the PDAs loaded with the software to use in a conservation project.

When Kilbourn started work in the Tabin Wildlife Reserve, she also brought with her the Handspring Visors, the Magellan GPS units and the CyberTracker software.

Dr Kilbourn and the rangers doing research in Tabin have been using CyberTracker with the Handspring Visors since sometime after April 2001, with the Visors being donated by the Handspring Foundation, who provided the project with 25 units of the handhelds.

The idea behind the software is very simple - you have an icon-based interface that takes you through a few simple steps. The icons have text labels on them, but even if you can't read, it's pretty easy to figure out how it all works.

For example, if you find Rhino footprints, all you have to do is tap on a little rhino icon for either actual sighting of the animal, or footprints, or dung and so on.

Having entered that information, you will then be prompted for footprint measurements, if any, and lastly the software will activate the Magellan GPS, taking a GPS reading for the information you just entered.

The software is versatile enough to allow people who have a a higher knowledge of habitat or vegetation to select a different sequence of icons in CyberTracker and put more written information in at certain points, for example whether it is a primary rainforest or species or plants and all this information is linked to time, day and GPS location.

The CyberTracker software is also simple enough to be customised by the researcher, and in fact, Dr Kilbourn does most of the customising herself for the Tabin version, even down to drawing the little icons required for the software.

With the information gathered, the Visors are then brought back to base camp and HotSync-ed with a PC. From there, the GPS information and notes contained in the Handspring Visors will be transferred to the desktop PC component of the CyberTracker system, which will then overlay all the information gathered on a very accurate GPS-enabled map of Tabin.

With this information, conservationists can get a graphical representation of the areas covered by their surveys, along with information on where the animals frequent and what their habits are, etc.

Not OK at high noon
"The main problem we've had with using the CyberTracker in Tabin is that at around 11am to 12 noon, there are no GPS satellites above us and so the Magellan GPS can't get a fix on the location," says Dr Kilbourn.

In that situation, the rangers have to resort to working out the location using a backup GPS unit and then marking it on a map.

The other issue is more of user comfort with the tools and knowing how to problem-solve, if there is a problem. "There are times when the rangers come up against a problem which they don't know how to solve and then there is a sort of blank zone when they came to a block and then didn't know what to do, so they figured it was easier not to use it. But I think that they are getting much more confident with it and can even teach others how to use it," adds Kilbourn.

Because the CyberTrackers are still relatively new, all the researchers at Tabin still carry a little notebook around with them as a backup to the information recorded in the handhelds.

"We're just at that stage where everybody is more comfortable with the tool and at some point we're going to say, 'from this date on, the data obtained by the CyberTracker will be used for data analysis.' The initial few months of use we were just in the testing phase. But what we have we can already easily query it for indices of animals seen by season, by rainfall, by species or even by the person that collected the data," says Kilbourn.

The Linear transect
Of course, using the CyberTracker is how I ended up on that vertical slope, with a team member's foot planted on my right arm as she tried to regain her footing.

While the data acquisition has been much simplified, to gather the data still requires good old-fashioned legwork - which still means trekking into the jungle and looking for sightings or signs of the Sumatran Rhino. I said that already, right?

Anyway, there are a few ways to do a systematic survey - one way is to travel in one direction, taking the so-called "path of least resistance." The other way, which is the way that was chosen for this particular survey, is a linear transect (Remember, this involves travelling in as straight a line as possible in one direction, following one of the points of a compass, either North, South, East or West).

The linear transect is certainly not the easiest way (you have to cross any obstacles in your path, with no option to go around them) but it is the most repeatable method, i.e. people can follow and go over your path again in the future and note down any changes over time.

This is where I come in - together with a group of volunteers and rangers and split into four teams, I trekked in the jungle for 11 days, looking for signs of the elusive Sumatran Rhino, using the CyberTracker all the way.

In the end, the teams managed to gather a lot of information on Sumatran Rhino, using the CyberTracker all the way.

In the end, the teams managed to gather a lot of information on Sumatran Rhinos in Tabin, along with other wildlife, uncovering tracks and collecting dung samples for later DNA analysis, though no team caught sight of the elusive animals, which was not surprising, because there are estimated to only be 5-19 animals in area twice the size of Singapore.

In case you're wondering, the team member who had accidentally stepped on my arm, survived. A ranger came over, unhooked her backpack and pulled her up. Strangely, she fell off a log bridge later (and survived yet again), but that is another story for another time...