Tourists on Safari Can Help Survey Wildlife through Their Photos

Safari guides + a stuck car = an idea is born

Lead author of the research, Kasim Rafiq, then a Ph.D. candidate at Liverpool John Moores University, cooked up the idea after his Land Rover had been stuck in a warthog burrow. Rafiq had been on the one-eared cheetah's, called Pavarotti, trail for months at this stage. 

"Eventually I got out of the hole and spoke with the safari guides who I met on the road nearby, and who were laughing," said Rafiq as he's about to embark upon a Fulbright Fellowship at UC Santa Cruz. He's looking to further expand the project while at UC Santa Cruz. 

I guess it’s official. Going to the US as a @USUKFulbright scholar at @ucsantacruz, working on projects using tourist photographs for wildlife monitoring and other carnivore ecology stuff. pic.twitter.com/AXs5RJQFQR

— Kasim Rafiq (@Kasim21) July 15, 2019

"They told me that they'd seen Pavarotti earlier that morning. At that point I really began to appreciate the volume of information that the guides and tourists were collecting and how it was being lost," continued Rafiq, upon commenting on the safari guides. 

Traditional data gathering methods

Typically, one of the three methods is used to gather animal population surveys in Africa: camera traps, track surveys, and call-in stations. 

These all come with their pros and cons, especially while surveying wild animals who can easily chew into or knock over certain traps and plans. Moreover, costs can wind up jumping up when creating these specific stations, or when materials are lost.

It‘s puppy time for the African wild dog in Botswana! pic.twitter.com/1PTG3EsZa3

— Dominik Behr (@dobehr) July 17, 2019

After a few frustrating losses of data, Rafiq started using this new tourist-friendly method. 

In order to ensure the data was as accurate, if not more accurate than the traditional methods, the team of researchers simultaneously used both methods, to begin with. 

"The results suggest that for certain species and within areas with wildlife tourism, tourist-contributed data can accomplish a similar goal as traditional surveying approaches but at a much lower cost, relative to some other methods," said Rafiq. 

Leopards are sneaky #TweetYourThesis pic.twitter.com/1GKtP7W3na

— Kasim Rafiq (@Kasim21) May 23, 2019

Going a step further, Rafiq wonders: "If we could combine advances in artificial intelligence and automated image classification with a coordinated effort to collect images, perhaps by partnering with tour operators, we would have a real opportunity for continuous, rapid-assessment of wildlife populations in high-value tourism areas."