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Our Impacts

Endangered Species protection & wildlife management

Wildlife monitoring and research for adaptive conservation.

Wildlife at Sango is continuously monitored by a full-time ecology team, ensuring that both species populations and ecosystems are carefully tracked through a comprehensive, data-driven program. The team conducts annual surveys and long-term studies to support informed, effective management decisions for the conservation of Sango’s natural resources.
Since 1998, Sango has carried out annual aerial surveys to monitor vegetation layers and herbivore populations across the conservancy. These surveys cover large areas in short timeframes, providing valuable data on population numbers and trends, particularly for large herbivores. To complement these aerial efforts, annual road strip surveys are carried out on the ground, providing a complementary view of animal presence and distribution. In addition to these broad surveys, the team also conducts specialised surveys, such as carnivore spoor surveys. This layered approach helps to understand the spatial distribution and movement patterns of species, allowing for more precise wildlife management strategies. For the past two years, photogrammetric count has been implemented, using AI to more accurately identify and count individuals of each species.

Shifting environmental conditions require adaptive management practices, guided by ongoing research and monitoring. By continuously assessing the health of species populations and ecosystems, the ecology team helps ensure that Sango’s wildlife can thrive despite the challenges posed by climate change.

Sango’s commitment to biodiversity goes beyond monitoring, with collaborative research projects that provide deeper insights into the region’s species and ecosystems. Recent studies include research on the interaction between brown and spotted hyenas (Cooper, PhD ongoing, University of Stellenbosch), the discovery of a new large branchiopod species for Southern Africa (Nhiwatiwa et al, 2017), contributions to the national leopard monitoring project (Shumba et al., 2022, Panthera), and the Zimbabwe Birdlife Vulture safe zone project.

Through this comprehensive approach, Sango ensures that its management decisions are based on reliable, up-to-date data, enabling the sustainable and adaptive conservation of its unique biodiversity.

Key figures:

20+ years

of continuous aerial survey data collected since 1998.

10+ collaborative

research projects completed with academic and conservation institutions.

8+ specialised

biodiversity monitoring protocols, including aerial counts, spoor surveys, vegetation assessments, photogrammetric count, etc.

This Project contributes to

discover more:

Elephant translocation and population management

Black rhinos protection and conservation

Natural resources protection unit

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