You’ve heard of smartphones, smart cars, smart cities, even smart refrigerators, but have you heard of Smart Parks? Smart Parks is a Netherlands-based team of technologists dreaming up inventive ways to realize the founders’ vision of bringing the power of modern technology to bear in conservation.
“Big tech organizations like Google and Microsoft have big conservation programs, but it’s not their core business,” says Tim van Dam, one of the co-founders of Smart Parks and a telecoms expert. “We know that if something is not your core business, you cannot get to the high-performance level that is needed for technological devices.”
Smart Park’s philosophy is to apply an innovative and research-and-development-focused approach, more commonly found in Silicon Valley, to conservation problems. While they explore many different forms of tech, they’re best-known for building so-called LoRa networks in parks and conservation areas, mostly in Africa, through which multiple devices can be connected to create “smart parks.”
LoRa, or long range, technology is a networking protocol that uses radio waves, much like the 4G and Wi-Fi networks. The key difference is that while 4G and Wi-Fi are designed to send a lot of data a short distance by using a lot of power, LoRa technology is designed to send tiny amounts of data — about the size of a text message — a very long way, using much less power.
“[LoRa] was the perfect match for connecting a lot of things in remote areas to make sure the park management protecting those areas have an opportunity to get way more data from the field,” van Dam said.
LoRa’s lower power requirements allow Smart Parks to design tracking devices that are smaller than traditional satellite collars. This is especially advantageous for tracking smaller animals like wild dogs, which can’t take the weight of a large battery, and, perhaps surprisingly, rhinos. While a rhino could easily carry the weight of a heavy battery, collars don’t work with their body shape.
Protecting the near-threatened southern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum simum) and the critically endangered black rhino (Diceros bicornis) is one of Smart Parks’ current main aims. Its rhino tracker is just under three centimetres cubed, small enough to be implanted into a hole cut into the rhino’s horn and then sealed by a vet.
