From dirt tracks to digital data: This scientist’s app turns desert natives into wildlife guardians

Imagine being able to use your smartphone to help track wildlife, map trails and even keep an eye on neighbourhood cats – all on one app with just a few taps of the screen. That is the power of CyberTracker, an innovation encouraging people to become citizen scientists and contribute to research and conservation. 

The brainchild of Mr Louis Liebenberg, a 69-year-old South African scientist and conservationist and 1998 Rolex Awards Laureate, the free app has been downloaded over 600,000 times in some 200 countries. 

It has been used by environmentalists, conservationists and laymen alike for research, education, field surveys, crime prevention, disaster relief and many other purposes. 

Users can create their own projects and set parameters, such as asking participants to mark on a map where they spotted specific plant species. They can also join existing projects. 

With an icon-based interface and only a handful of steps to record observations, the app is accessible to all, including children. 

Last year, Mr Liebenberg launched a new version, called CyberTracker Online, with key changes to complement the app, which is still named CyberTracker in app stores. 

CyberTracker Online’s interface is even more user-friendly, and data can be uploaded to a centralised database when there is internet access, also making the information available to an international community for multiple uses.

“This creates the possibility of real-time monitoring of complex ecosystems on a worldwide basis and it provides a flow of financial support for indigenous communities,” he highlights. “That provides us with a capacity to understand not only what we are doing to the environment, but what we can do to protect our planet.”

He adds that CyberTracker’s global popularity owes a great deal to Swiss watchmaker Rolex’s steadfast support through the years. 

“Receiving the 1998 Rolex Award played a critical role in CyberTracker’s success because without it, nobody would have known about us,” he says. Over 25 years later, Rolex is still supporting his work, now via its Perpetual Planet Initiative. 

Thinking of future generations

Mr Liebenberg had developed the original version of the app in 1997 for the indigenous Ju/’hoansi people in Southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert, to enable them to monetise their famed tracking skills while aiding conservation. 

Then, new fences across the desert were decimating wildlife by cutting off migration routes, harming the Ju/’hoansi’s nomadic, subsistence lifestyle too. 

Unable to read or write, the Ju/’hoansi have used the app to collaborate with conservationists in monitoring wildlife. This benefits both parties. While helping to gather information, the Ju/’hoansi can also earn an income with their tracking prowess. 

“By combining their observations with remote sensing and other data, the scientists get a much fuller picture of what’s happening on the ground,” Mr Liebenberg says. 

With CyberTracker Online, Mr Liebenberg hopes that the app will attract not only trackers and scientists, but also youths, who could, for example, watch over wildlife in parks and share their findings with other young people around the world. 

Its new features include story maps, which combine data in tables and maps, and use photos and videos to make the information come alive in ways that are accessible for everyone from PhD students to primary school children. 

“The art of tracking is the ideal way to introduce scientific reasoning and understanding to young children. There’s no mediation, no microscope, telescope, books or anything that comes between you and the tracks. It’s very immediate,” he explains. 

He himself was bitten by the tracking bug when he was just four years old. While playing hide-and-seek in sand dunes on a Cape Town beach, he spied tracks in the sand. 

“I can still vividly remember following the sequence of footprints over the crest of the dune, right to where the boy was hiding. I even remember the surprise on his face.”

At 25 years old, he travelled alone into the Kalahari Desert to find the Ju/’hoansi, the last bow and arrow hunters who still had reservoirs of knowledge and expertise in tracking. 

He even stayed with them, developing deep relationships with them. Even before he debuted CyberTracker, he was helping them to preserve their art of tracking, which was dying out.

Reasoning that their ancient practices could be adapted into a modern profession gathering information for conservation projects, he came up with a system to certify their skills in 1994. 

This helped improve their chances of securing employment by offering conservationists an objective measure of their abilities. 

He points out: “Rare and endangered species are very difficult to capture on camera traps and remote sensing. These are the very species that trackers like the Ju/’hoansi can find, observe and discover which most conventional scientists will miss. There’s still so much that we can learn from them for biodiversity conservation.”

Both the certification process, which is now internationally recognised, and CyberTracker are administered by CyberTracker Conservation, a non-profit organisation based in South Africa which he co-founded and leads as executive director. 

“Even in communities where tracking was completely lost, by developing these resources and paying people to gather data on a regular basis, we can bring back indigenous skills quite rapidly,” he says. 

This will ensure they are passed down through generations, just as nurturing a love of conservation in children will spark new efforts and secure existing ones’ longevity. 

Tracking school: A far-ranging vision

Meanwhile, Mr Liebenberg also oversees the training of new trackers who are educated at the Ju/’hoan San Tracker School in the Kalahari desert. 

It teaches trackers from as far as North America and Europe, melding indigenous knowledge and skills with modern science and technology to bring back indigenous tracking across the globe.

His forward-thinking vision, including for CyberTracker, is part of the reason Rolex, which has been supporting pioneering explorers to push the boundaries of human endeavour for nearly a century, has continued to support him. 

With climate change and other problems threatening the world’s natural ecosystems, Rolex has shifted from championing exploration for the sake of discovery to protecting the planet, committing for the long term to empower individuals and organisations that are using science to illuminate and address today’s environmental challenges. 

It reinforced this engagement in 2019 with its Perpetual Planet Initiative, which initially focused on the Rolex Awards and longstanding partnerships with the National Geographic Society and Mission Blue. 

Legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle, who is also a Rolex Testimonee, founded and leads the latter organisation to explore and protect oceans. 

The Initiative now has a diverse and growing portfolio of over 30 partnerships, concentrating on ocean conservation, wilderness protection and the living world’s preservation, including with Rewilding Argentina and Rewilding Chile, which protect landscapes in South Africa, Under The Pole expeditions for underwater exploration, and

Rolex Awards Laureates

Rolex also advances organisations and initiatives fostering the next generations of explorers, scientists and conservationists through scholarships and grants. These span the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society and The Rolex Explorers Club Grants that nurture talented young people and enable them to gain experience in their chosen fields, and more.

 Like Rolex, Mr Liebenberg plans to keep focusing on the future. Although his tracking career has spanned over 40 years, he has no plans to retire from the field. He shares: “The thought of not doing this work has just not occurred to me. I’ve got no intention of stopping, because there’s just so much more to learn.”

We The Earth