Developed in 1997 by Rolex Awards for Enterprise Laureate Louis Liebenberg, CyberTracker was greater than a digital instrument for preserving biodiversity – it empowered indigenous communities. At this time, CyberTracker is receiving an improve
The traditional artwork of animal monitoring, honed and perfected by indigenous communities over hundreds of years, stands as a testomony to the fragile stability between humanity and nature. Indigenous trackers possess unparalleled expertise, developed over millennia, to interpret delicate indicators within the surroundings. This experience has been important for survival, enabling hunters to observe prey throughout huge landscapes and anticipate adjustments within the surroundings.
Rolex Awards for Enterprise Laureate Louis Liebenberg, has devoted his life to preserving this artwork, whereas guaranteeing that its custodians, the indigenous trackers of the Kalahari Desert, discover new alternatives in a quickly altering world. By his revolutionary CyberTracker software program, Liebenberg has not solely safeguarded a convention, but in addition created a strong instrument for world conservation efforts.
THE GENESIS OF A LIFELONG PASSION
Liebenberg’s fascination with monitoring started throughout a childhood sport of hide-and-seek on the dunes of a Cape City seashore. At simply 4 years previous, he adopted footprints within the sand to find his good friend’s hiding place. “I can nonetheless vividly keep in mind following the sequence of footprints over the crest of the dune, proper to the place this boy was hiding,” he recollects. “I even keep in mind the shock on his face. That’s my first visceral reminiscence of monitoring any person.” This straightforward but profound second sparked a lifelong ardour for the tales that nature might inform.
Years later, at age 25, Liebenberg ventured alone into Namibia’s Kalahari Desert to stick with the native peoples of the area, the Ju/’hoansi. Right here, he realized the traditional ability of monitoring from those that had relied on it for his or her survival for hundreds of years. It was this work that drove Liebenberg to create CyberTracker.
Liebenberg’s ties to the Ju/’hoansi neighborhood run deep. In 1990, his shut good friend and expert tracker, !Nate, urged him to assist the individuals of the Kalahari, who confronted mounting challenges resulting from dwindling wildlife numbers and restrictive land insurance policies. A lot of the area’s biodiversity had been decimated by fences that had minimize off conventional migration routes for animals, disrupting the fragile ecological stability. This meant that the Ju/’hoansi might now not maintain their nomadic, subsistence life-style. The disaster highlighted the urgency of preserving their monitoring expertise, which have been susceptible to fading away, as youthful generations have been pressured to depart their houses and ancestral teachings behind searching for typically low-paid, low-skilled work in city areas to outlive.
Liebenberg started to formulate a plan. He reasoned that the outstanding monitoring expertise of the indigenous inhabitants could possibly be developed into a contemporary career, gathering data for conservation tasks. In 1994, he started certifying the talents of indigenous trackers to assist them safe employment by giving an goal measure of their expertise.
Recognising the necessity to act, Liebenberg envisioned a option to bridge the hole between historical monitoring experience and fashionable know-how. This led to the creation of CyberTracker in 1997 that ran on GPS techniques, palm pilots, Android and iPhones. Certainly one of its standout options was its capacity to harness indigenous information for conservation functions. Licensed trackers, geared up with CyberTracker, present detailed insights into species and ecosystems that far surpass tech-based imaging applied sciences. This depth of understanding has confirmed invaluable in creating correct conservation fashions and defending biodiversity. “Except you’ve got individuals on the bottom with actual subject expertise that may really make actual observations of actual species, your fashions could possibly be utterly fallacious,” Liebenberg elaborates.
GLOBAL IMPACT
Supported by the distinguished Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1998, CyberTracker catapulted onto the worldwide stage, incomes widespread recognition and attaining outstanding acclaim. “The Rolex Award itself performed a essential function within the subsequent success of CyberTracker, as a result of with out it, no person would have recognized about us,” Liebenberg recollects. Since then, the software program has been downloaded greater than 600,000 instances in over 200 international locations. CyberTracker has turn into a useful instrument for wildlife conservation, aiding within the safety of species starting from rhinos to butterflies. Its versatility even prolonged its purposes to citizen science, schooling, farming, social and well being surveys, catastrophe reduction, and crime prevention.
Greater than 25 years after its inception, CyberTracker continues to evolve. Liebenberg is presently testing CyberTracker On-line, an up to date app-based model that makes it accessible to everybody, from illiterate elders in distant communities to 10-year-old youngsters. The brand new, easy-to-use platform places monitoring science in everybody’s arms, consolidating the core components of CyberTracker and permitting customers to construct customized apps tailor-made to their particular work. This new strategy to the software program that CyberTracker On-line presents will make creating tasks extremely easy for anybody with a smartphone and entry to a pc.
Knowledge will be collected offline and uploaded as soon as web connectivity is on the market, enabling trackers to seamlessly share their findings with a centralised world database. This ensures useful monitoring knowledge will be accessed and utilised for a variety of conservation efforts and past.
“It creates the opportunity of real-time monitoring of complicated ecosystems on a worldwide foundation,” says Liebenberg, “and it offers a stream of monetary help for indigenous communities.” He emphasises that sustainable socio-economic fashions are important as they allow native populations to actively take part in biodiversity conservation – a essential step in tackling the results of local weather change.
CyberTracker On-line has already been picked up by citizen scientists worldwide, together with tasks that get youngsters out into nature. Initiatives like ToadNUTS, which protects the Western Leopard Toad in Cape City, and BioKids in Michigan, which teaches youngsters scientific reasoning, exemplify the software program’s versatility. These tasks not solely foster environmental stewardship, but in addition encourage the following technology of conservationists.
PASSING THE TORCH
Past know-how, Liebenberg continues to coach new trackers on the Ju/’hoan San Tracker Faculty within the Kalahari, which sees college students from so far as North America and Europe. Combining indigenous information and expertise with fashionable science and know-how, the varsity goals to revive indigenous monitoring on a worldwide scale.
For Liebenberg, monitoring is greater than a ability, explaining: “The artwork of monitoring is the perfect means of introducing scientific reasoning and understanding to youngsters. There’s no mediation, no microscope, telescope, books or something that comes between you and the tracks. It’s very instant.”
TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE TOGETHER
The launch of CyberTracker On-line aligns with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, a dedication to supporting people and organisations addressing at present’s environmental challenges. Established in 2019, the Perpetual Planet Initiative builds on practically a century of Rolex’s custom of championing exploration. Initially centered on the Rolex Awards for Enterprise and partnerships corresponding to Mission Blue and the Nationwide Geographic Society, the initiative has expanded to incorporate over 20 collaborations. These embody tasks like Rewilding Argentina, Coral Gardeners, and Steve Boyes’ explorations of Africa’s river basins.
By scholarships, grants, and partnerships, the initiative fosters the following technology of explorers and scientists. By making monitoring science accessible to everybody, Liebenberg empowers communities to contribute to conservation efforts and fight local weather change. With options like story maps that mix knowledge with pictures and movies, the brand new software program makes scientific data accessible to all, from main faculty college students to PhD researchers. This inclusivity ensures that everybody can play a job in defending their native surroundings and, by extension, the planet.
Whereas Liebenberg’s personal monitoring profession stretches again greater than 40 years, his work is much from over. “The considered not doing this work has simply not occurred to me. I’ve received no intention of stopping, as a result of there’s simply a lot extra to study,” he says. Together with his unwavering dedication and the continued help of Rolex, Liebenberg is guaranteeing that the traditional artwork of monitoring not solely survives, however thrives within the fashionable world.
This story was first seen on WOW #76 Spring 2025 Situation
For extra on the most recent in luxurious watch reads, click on right here.
