Conservation NGOs improve enforcement and patrol in national parts in a SMART way

An important part of managing the country’s national parks is to enforce the laws to protect the delicate ecosystems from various encroachments. That’s why conservation NGOs, such as the Belize Audubon Society, are receiving training in SMART technology. In this case, SMART is the special monitoring and reporting tool. The BAS’s Johnny Tzib, the manager for the St. Herman’s Blue Hole and Guanacaste National Parks explained why this training helps. 

Johnny Tzib, Protected Areas Manager, BAS: “The basis of this forum is to have an open forum where all the organizations invited here can have a time and exchange on how SMART has helped them with their patrols and how it has improved their reporting processes and even their analysis process of the data so that they can plan strategically ahead of time on how to conduct their work in terms of resource management and protection. For these two days training organizations that have been invited and have attended this event are organizations such as Southern Environmental Association and we have also Itzamna Society from San Antonio who are currently working in the Elijio Panti National Park. We have personnel from STACA who currently work in the Billy Barquedier National Park. We have rangers also from the Mayflower Bocawina National Park and also from the various protected areas that Belize Audubon Society co-manages such as St Herman’s Blue Hole, Guanacaste National Park, we have rangers from Cockscomb Basin as well as from Half Moon Caye Natural Monument.”

Other participants included the managers of the Mayflower Bocawina National Park and the Southern Environmental Association (SEA). Tzib says that this cross-sharing of ideas can only improve the national protected areas network. 

Johnny Tzib, Protected Areas Manager, BAS: “So far some of our presenters have indicated and expressed that SMART is a changing software that changes very often and then has huge updates very often and some of them have expressed that while it has been helping them in executing their jobs in improving their reporting skills there is still much to do because some of them believe that it requires a lot of technical skills, it requires a lot of time to input when you want to improve your data models, when you want to improve the way how you want to do your reports so some of them indicated that they lack the technical capacity so that they can be able to undertake this job in house.”