Smart Parks

Great thanks to The for mentioning our work and OpenCollar Initiative in their 2022 Annual Report under Innovation with a global impact!

OpenCollar animal tracking and the Zephyr real-time operating system

The OpenCollar Initiative is a conservation collaboration for designing, supporting, and deploying open source tracking collar hardware and software for wildlife monitoring projects. OpenCollar integrates LoRa, GSM, Bluetooth LE, and GPS technologies for a seamless wildlife monitoring solution based on the Zephyr real-time operating system. By making the hardware and software open source, the OpenCollar Initiative aims to attract and inspire talented students, researchers, and tech- savvy conservationists to develop tracking systems that are more customizable to accommodate the needs of various animals. The OpenCollar Initiative started with the design and deployment of elephant tracking collars and has since expanded. It now provides field-tested solutions for tracking rhinos, lions, cheetahs, wisents, wild dog and other animals.

Extremely sad and worrying news from Namibia this morning:

"The number of endangered rhinos poached in Namibia last year was the highest on record and almost twice as many as the year before, officials say"

Rhino numbers in Africa have dropped significantly in recent decades to feed the demand for rhino horn in China and Vietnam. Rhino horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine (no proven medical benefit) and horns are displayed as a sign for wealth (?!!).

The last years we've worked, and still work hard, at Smart Parks with all our partners to develop, test and produce the RhinoEdge sensors as a tool to support the protection of these extremely threatened species.

Team Smart Parks wishes you all happy holidays and a fabulous 2023!

Another trip around the sun and we are very grateful for all the people and partners that we work with and the impact we can make. Drink some champagne, give each other a hug and we’ll see you in the new year🎄🦏

Seven critically endangered black rhinos and twenty white rhinos have been successfully translocated to Zinave National Park in Mozambique. With this reintroduction, the black rhino has returned to Southern Mozambique which disappeared from the region 40 years ago.

Beyond its extinction in Mozambique, the black rhino suffered a radical decline across its entire native range: between 1960 and present day their numbers, scattered sparsely from Kenya down to South Africa, dropped by 98% to less than 6,000 individuals. Present rhino populations are small and threatened by rising onslaught of poaching.

To maximise the safety of the rhinos in Zinave National Park, they have been fitted with the Smart Parks RhinoEdge Pucks, enabling the near-real time tracking of the animals. Read the full article:

https://www.smartparks.org/news/the-black-rhinos-journey-back-to-zinave-national-park-mozambique/

Black rhino eartag deployment , thank you @[1784140082766@lovenature] for the fantastic video🦏 and credits to the vet 💪🏻

full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HugkvpjSCsY&t=1s