The CSIR and the South African National Parks Board have entered into a strategic partnership agreement aimed at optimising efforts to protect the region's natural assets - with priority given to scarce resources such as rhino horn and abalone that have become the target of poaching operations.

The agreement is announced amid great public concern about continued poaching incidents and national awareness campaigns leading up to Rhino Day on 22 September.

Through the partnership, the CSIR will serve as technology capability to SANParks at strategic, tactical and operational optimisation levels. As a multi-disciplinary organisation, the CSIR is able to contribute from different research domains to the challenges facing environmental asset protection. The initial programme requires the expertise of defence science and engineering teams experienced in working with specialised South African military, security and intelligence organisations. CSIR environmental and building or transport specialists will be involved in further stages.

Maj Gen (Ret.) Johan Jooste, Commanding Officer of Special Projects at SANParks, explains the intent behind the agreement: “We are facing a battle at the moment and need to respond deftly, and with the best means we have. But, we cannot forget the bigger war. We are therefore taking a long-term strategic view on increasing the effectiveness of environmental asset protection interventions at our parks throughout the country. At the highest level we need to bring together the many departments and agencies that have a mandate to act in this field and get cohesion and consistency in how we best work together. There are policy issues involved.”

Jooste also explains the challenges at tactical level: “The publicity given to rhino poaching in particular, has led – among other initiatives – to a host of solutions and tools offered to us by various vendors to counter the problem. We need a strategically independent technology agency to help us identify what the best tools and tactics are to use.”

He continues: “Also, as the media reports on countering approaches, perpetrators change their tactics. They switch to other commodities - say from rhino horn to drugs - for a cooling down period or to other modes of operation. For this reason, we will also not release detail regarding the projects we do with the CSIR. We need virtual ‘in-house’ technologists ready to help us respond with speed and agility to whatever new schemes we need to counter.”

According to Charl Petzer, programme manager at the CSIR, the organisation’s main role will be to act as strategic research and technology advisor to SANParks. “We will be assisting SANParks from strategic and planning levels through to tactical issues such as doing technology evaluation and testing to identify the best technologies to use for sensing, detecting, mobility and so forth,” he explains. “Operationally we need to understand how to manage the life cycle of the resources they have and optimise capabilities to be fit for the challenges they face. For example, we could establish so-called operations rooms for real-time surveillance, national command centres where all law enforcement agencies and departments can work together on environmental asset protection – not just rhino horn but also better border control to counter smuggling of all types,” Petzer continues. “As examples, we are currently evaluating different stealth technologies to detect human movement across border zones, as well as means of detecting the location of a shooter within seconds. Better sensor technologies are also looked at to add to surveillance capabilities at poaching hot spots,” he adds.

The partnership is not limited to CSIR-owned capabilities.  Industry and domain experts will be brought in to participate in the programmes. For example, to understand the so-called ‘drive for the hunt’ that forms part of the strategic element of the work scope. “We know poaching is fuelled by personal agendas,” explains Duarte Concalves, a principal systems engineer at the CSIR. “For this reason, we want to follow a human-centric approach to securing parks. Socio-economic conditions facing workers and surrounding communities, work approaches and business processes – all of these drive behaviour and that is the work of social scientist out there,” he explains.

The agreement commits the two parties to a five-year strategic technology partnership, and the immediate focus will be on operations at the Kruger National Park. “We have many years of experience in safety and security – mainly for the military, some of it covert and all with a strong research and engineering core,” Petzer explains.  “Part of our work will be to set up proof of concept designs to be put through rigorous testing,” he says.  “We do not put out protective technologies without testing if and how it can be breached,” he concludes.