One of the primary responsibilities of the Mabula Ground Hornbill Project is to monitor the national population of Southern Ground-hornbills. Southern Ground-hornbills are incredibly difficult to census, as they naturally occur at low densities, with a single-family group using on average 100km2. However, the Southern Ground-Hornbill Working Group developed and adopted a simple but logical monitoring system that works on four-year cycles. This way we will be able to assess if the population is still declining to “Critically Endangered”, if it has stabilised, or if conservation efforts are leading to population recovery. This will guide our conservation focus, allowing us to target areas where the population is most endangered, so that we can target our resources strategically, and thus make the most conservation progress. Most importantly, it allows us to monitor areas that may not normally be assessed through other forums such as bird atlassing, park management, or birding trip reports.
Become a Champion
Do you have ground-hornbills in your area, and would you be willing to lead the citizen science reporting for your town, village or farming community?
Why do we need to monitor the national population?
How Do We Monitor?
Censusing takes place using a grid system at the scale of pentads (five minutes of latitude by five minutes of longitude – i.e. squares with sides of roughly 9 km, one ninth the size of quarter degree grid cells). The use of monitoring within pentads was adopted by South African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2) in 2007 and is highly suitable for monitoring Southern Ground-hornbills as these are a proxy for a single Southern Ground-hornbill territory.
How To Become A CHAMPION?
The first step is to set up your CHAMPION base, your army of citizen scientists that will be your group of contacts in your area that will inform you of any Southern Ground-hornbill sightings. It is essential that you should know everyone that you add to your group, as information such as the location of a nest, may lead to disturbance, egg theft, or poaching, and so you should feel comfortable with the people you have in your group (for more information see Box 1). The best way of managing these contacts and receiving their sightings is through a WhatsApp group.
WhatsApp Group Caution
In addition to the sharing of critical information, WhatsApp group admins, members, and their respective organisations become part of the “chain of publication” for whatever is posted on the group. Messages and images that are posted on private groups can result in serious repercussions, including being found guilty of defamation or hate speech on the basis of vicarious liability. At present there is no certainty to the extent and severity of these charges, but several external incidents have occurred where content from WhatsApp groups have been utilised in South African Courts of Law.