Technology is Transforming Conservation in Dzanga-Sangha, Central African Republic

Within the dense emerald canopy of the Congo Basin, the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Area (DSPA) pulses with life. Located in the southwest corner of the Central African Republic, this 4,589 km² expanse of tropical rainforest is one of the last bastions of forest elephant populations on Earth — a place where critically endangered western lowland gorillas roam beneath towering hardwoods and elusive bongos flicker through the shadows. It also contains Dzanga Bai, a vast forest clearing known as “the elephant village” where up to 200 forest elephants gather daily.

‍

Jointly managed by the Central African Ministry of Water, Forest, Hunting and Fishing and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), DSPA is part of the Sangha Trinational landscape, an expansive UNESCO World Heritage Site shared by the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, and CAR. Despite its protected status, the area faces a range of conservation challenges.

‍

What’s at Risk

The Dzanga-Sangha faces mounting pressures that threaten to unravel its delicate ecological balance. The primary threats are the unsustainable and often illicit exploitation of local natural resources. Deforestation is primarily driven by slash-and-burn agriculture and the expansion of farmland. Other pressures include hunting, poaching, and mining activities, all of which are closely linked to limited socio-economic development opportunities. These threats are exacerbated by the geographical isolation of the DSPA and the recurring crises in the country.

• Commercial poaching, particularly of forest elephants for ivory and bushmeat.
• Habitat loss is driven by unsustainable logging practices, illegal logging, mining, and agricultural encroachment.
• Zoonotic diseases—illnesses that can be transmitted from animals to humans—pose a dual threat to both biodiversity and public health.
• And, in a region shaped by decades of political instability, enforcing environmental protections remains a significant challenge.

Yet, amid these complexities, a quiet technological revolution is underway, reshaping how conservation is done in Central Africa.

‍

‍EarthRanger: A Digital Nervous System for the Forest

In Dzanga-Sangha, EarthRanger serves as a centralized digital hub, collecting and synthesizing data from patrol teams, researchers, and satellite systems in real-time.

Previously, information was recorded manually on paper sheets and later entered into spreadsheets, leading to delays in analysis and action. Today, field teams use EarthRanger Mobile and inReach GPS devices, which provide satellite communication to stay connected even in remote areas. These devices are integrated into EarthRanger, allowing observations to be logged and shared, often within hours, increasing coordination and responsiveness across the protected area.

‍

Gorilla Habituation: Faster, Safer, Smarter

Western lowland gorillas are now being tracked with much greater efficiency. The painstaking process of habituation—acclimating gorilla groups to human observers for research and tourism—has been greatly improved through EarthRanger. 

Using EarthRanger Mobile, trackers can:

• Collect data regarding the location of nests, tracks, and feeding trees.
• Report interaction between groups and measure the habituation progress of each individual
• Flag signs of respiratory illness (like coughing)
• Detect illegal human activities near family groups and alert the anti-poaching team in near real time.
• Visualize and review the data daily during debriefing to plan activities strategically for the next day.

This not only improves the habituation process and data quality but also enhances team security and early warning systems for disease outbreaks.

‍

One Health in Action: Tracking Wildlife Mortality

Dzanga-Sangha is a key site One Health surveillance, a collaborative approach recognizing that human, animal, and environmental health are intertwined. This effort includes collaboration with the Helmholtz Institute for One Health, supporting integrated monitoring and research.

When a carcass is found in the forest, the DSPA team logs the event in EarthRanger, noting species, condition, and suspected cause of death (e.g., snare, firearm, unknown). This triggers an alert, created in EarthRanger Mobile and uploaded to EarthRanger Web once the team returns to headquarters, to veterinary specialists, who collect tissue samples for analysis. These rapid responses are critical for detecting diseases like Ebola, Anthrax, Monkeypox, and others, which have decimated great ape populations in the past and are a major threat to neighboring human communities. Globally, sites like DSPA are on the front line of pandemic detection, as interfaces between dense forest and human activity are among the highest-risk areas for future outbreaks.

‍

Forest Monitoring with Bioacoustics and Satellites

Dzanga-Sangha’s guardians now harness Global Forest Watch alerts and deploy bioacoustic sensors—devices that "listen" to the forest for gunshots and even elephant rumbles. Audio is analyzed by Cornell University’s Elephant Listening Project, where researchers decode patterns and send insights back to field teams.

Historical soundscapes are now being uploaded into EarthRanger, building a baseline to track long-term changes, spotlight poaching hotspots, and deploy law enforcement teams accordingly.

Together, these innovations paint a fuller, data-driven picture of life in the rainforest.

‍

Results and What’s Next

Since adopting EarthRanger, Dzanga-Sangha has seen remarkable advances:

• A unified system for standardized data collection and secure storage across different departments.
• Efficient gorilla monitoring and improved disease detectability in gorillas.
• Rapid responses to poaching events. Prior to EarthRanger, when gunshots were heard in the gorilla habituation zone, they were simply recorded in an Excel spreadsheet for monitoring, which did not allow for a timely response. Now, with the alert system, the anti-poaching team is aware and can reorganize a patrol in the area based on the data. (i.e., time, location, and orientation of the gunshot).

Looking forward, the team plans to:

• Develop customized and automated health alerts for gorilla monitoring that track trends over time, such as sending an alert after a specified number of gorilla-related health events have been logged. 
• Expand integration with platforms like Ecoscope for deeper analytics. 
• Integrate EarthRanger across the DSPA program, including community development through a monitoring plan with specific indicators (M&E) for the protected area management, based on information needed to follow the impact of activities. To achieve this, the team will define an event in EarthRanger, such as an event focused on education, agricultural support within the community, and human-wildlife conflict mitigation. 

Scale up forest and biodiversity monitoring with AI by implementing sound monitoring, in collaboration with Cornell University, to track additional species through noise, such as monkey calls. Other surveillance activities include camera data, which will be implemented through integrating TrapTagger and/or TrailGuard cameras across key areas of the landscape.

‍

In a Nutshell

From field notebooks to real-time dashboards, Dzanga-Sangha is undergoing a digital transformation. As conservationists, scientists, and communities come together, EarthRanger is helping turn data into action—and action into long-term protection for one of the last forest elephant strongholds.

‍

‍