This platform, known as the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART), can be programmed to the specific needs of a species or landscape, incorporating the boundaries of protected areas, wildlife corridors, patrol routes and so much more. It builds maps, has navigation capabilities, incorporates photos, and organizes and analyzes data. This information sometimes is used as evidence for prosecution of poachers.<\/p>\n
This information also helps pinpoint where to deploy personnel, and how to best to use limited resources in Virunga\u2019s vast hillside forests.<\/p>\n \u201cWith this innovative tool, every patrol conducted by park rangers informs the field teams about the threats in order to make plans and draw strategies to overcome these challenges,\u201d said Eustrate Uzabaho, a field officer at the\u00a0International Gorilla Conservation Programme\u00a0(IGCP), who works in the Greater Virunga Landscape, an interconnected network of protected areas that straddle this tri-border region.<\/p>\n Targeted, coordinated monitoring is crucial across the gorilla\u2019s 777-square-kilometer (300-square-mile) habitat. There are two locations: the Virunga mountain range, which includes the Mikeno sector of the DRC\u2019s Virunga National Park, Rwanda\u2019s Volcanoes National Park, and Uganda\u2019s Mgahinga Gorilla National Park. The other habitat is Uganda\u2019s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and the Sarambwe Nature Reserve in the DRC. In all, 11 parks dot the region.<\/p>\n The SMART platform continues to improve with advancing technology, though it\u2019s been a tried-and-true tool since its initial launch in 2012. Since then, it\u2019s helped focus conservation actions at more than\u00a01,000 sites in 70-plus countries.<\/p>\n SMART is equipped with powerful query and summary functions \u00a0and generates reports that help protect gorillas and other wildlife within the Greater Virunga Landscape. In the field, rangers input all pertinent information, from natural history data and wildlife sightings to evidence of poaching activity, such as snares, traps, extinguished campfires, animal carcasses or footprints.<\/p>\n Those targeting gorillas aren\u2019t the only threat. Bushmeat hunters set snares to catch ungulates \u2014 antelopes, bushpigs, duikers, bushbucks and others \u2014 that share the landscape with mountain gorillas. But snares aren\u2019t selective, and sometimes gorillas are caught, leading to loss of limb or even life.<\/p>\n Rangers also log data on other damaging incursions. The region is home to a growing human population, with people coming in to harvest bamboo, collect herbs and honey and cut trees for firewood. Guards also monitor areas where people regularly encounter wildlife in the parks\u2019 buffer zones and adjacent community fields and villages<\/p>\n The SMART platform allows the data to be transmitted directly from the field to a database, without the need to upload it at the end of a patrol. In locations that lack cell service, rangers can use satellite internet to upload data. It\u2019s stored in the cloud and accessible on computer, tablet and cellphone.<\/p>\n Real-time updates offer hope of enforcement for large areas, many of them remote. SMART monitoring can also help mitigate growing wildlife-human conflict across the region.<\/p>\n The platform enhances monitoring in the Virunga region, said Jonah Ratsimbazafy, president of the International Primatological Society (IPS). \u201cThese tools are currently assisting in monitoring and mapping poaching at the source. But they still require specialized training and expertise for effective use,\u201d he told Mongabay.<\/p>\n At least 1,400 park rangers across three parks \u2014Virunga National Park, Volcanoes National Park and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park \u2014 have now been trained to use SMART. \u201cThe wide deployment of such technologies requires many park rangers be trained to effectively support conservation efforts to protect gorillas,\u201d Ratsimbazafy said.<\/p>\n Mountain gorillas teetered perilously close to extinction in 2010, when just\u00a0480 remained in the wild. But a suite of efforts, technology including SMART and broad coalitions of conservationists, scientists and government agencies are bringing them back.<\/p>\n In 2025, conservationists estimated numbers at 1,063, a jump of \u00a0more than 120% from 2010. In 2018, mountain gorillas were reclassified from critically endangered to endangered on the IUCN Red List.<\/p>\n Building the protection force has been among the most important initiatives, alongside veterinary care for the gorillas, working with communities and creating a thriving ecotourism industry that feeds money into local economies.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s taken more than 40 years to accomplish this, and mountain gorillas are not yet safe.<\/p>\n Primatologist\u00a0Dian Fossey\u00a0brought their plight to world attention with her book,\u00a0Gorillas in the Mist<\/em>, after 20 years studying them in Rwanda. She reported relentless poaching and warned that the mountain gorilla faced grave danger of extinction. She was murdered in her cabin in Rwanda in 1985; her book was made into a\u00a0movie\u00a0in 1988.<\/p>\n Conflicts have long raged\u00a0in this region. The 1994 Rwandan genocide was followed by two wars that involved multiple African nations fighting in the DRC, then called Za\u00efre.<\/p>\n Virunga sits within a high-conflict zone used by militarized rebel groups including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and\u00a0M23, both of which are listed on the U.N. Security Council\u2019s sanctions list for mass murder and violation of international law. Much of Virunga National Park has fallen within M23\u2019s operational zone in the eastern DRC since late 2021.<\/p>\n This is among the most dangerous places to conserve wildlife. Rangers here are heavily armed, yet\u00a0more than 200 have been killed\u00a0in the line of duty in the DRC\u2019s Virunga National Park alone, according to Andrew Seguya, executive secretary of the\u00a0Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration\u00a0(GVTC).<\/p>\n Despite all this, mountain gorillas are rebounding.<\/p>\n Government support has played an important role, and the GVTC, which is a treaty that was ratified in 2015, formalized wildlife conservation between the three Virunga countries.<\/p>\n The increase in numbers is particularly dramatic considering the mountain gorilla\u2019s biology. Females don\u2019t reproduce until the age of 8 to 10, and they normally give birth to a single infant only once every four to six years.<\/p>\n![\"Phone-based](\"https:\/\/imgs.mongabay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2026\/04\/23165255\/001_SmartTool_Rwanda_Gorilla-1.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
Combatting poaching<\/strong><\/h2>\n
An unlikely rebound in a dangerous land<\/strong><\/h2>\n