Kalahari Camelback Tracker Project
Community-based Natural Resource Monitoring (CBNRM)
Comanis Foundation financially supports a major grassroots Community-based Natural Resource Monitoring (CBNRM) project on critical wildlife lands situated in the heart of Botswana’s free-ranging Kalahari ecosystem. The Kalahari Camelback Trackers project is professionalizing otherwise destitute traditional trackers to survey wildlife populations over vast Wildlife Management Areas in a rigorous scientific framework utilizing camels as a low maintenance logistic for long-distance transportation. This landmark project advances several sustainable development priorities including biodiversity monitoring and wildlife conservation, poverty alleviation, and preservation of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, namely, the art of tracking.
Since 2010, Comanis has supported foundational scientific research in tracking that lead directly to the development of the Kalahari Camelback Trackers. Further reading can be found here:
Since 2010, Comanis has supported foundational scientific research in tracking that lead directly to the development of the Kalahari Camelback Trackers. Further reading can be found here:
Tanate Sustainable Development Organization is the Botswana registered Not-for-Profit which Comanis finances as the facilitating NGO for the Kalahari Camelback Trackers. Major essential investments continue in 2023. 2022 saw the purchase of 24 camels from the Tsabong Community Trust and Camel Park and a months-long training program for those camels and trackers with the assistance of Saharan camel experts from France. In March 2023, the trackers successfully rode their camels 170 kilometres to their new home outside Zutshwa village. 16 trackers and a field coordinator are employed fulltime. Their intensive training continues through 2023 towards a first major track survey planned for 2024. That goal may mark the first time in Botswana, possibly Africa, that free-ranging wildlife populations comprising a complete mammalian community can be monitored to a rigorous scientific standard autonomously by a rural indigenous community.
