|
The man moves silently across the wild, almost barren terrain. In the vast, empty stillness there is no sign of animal life no sign, that is, except the minute detail of tracks and spore hidden in the desert.
A wildebeest passed this way. And a kudu. The evidence is there for someone who knows what to look for: a scuff in the sand, a drop of moisture on a twig, a flattened blade of grass, a pellet of animal droppings.
This information helps the man track the animals to keep them safe from poachers or to monitor their feeding patterns. The man in question is a tracker in one of South Africa's huge national parks. His art was fashioned in the Stone Age, but now 21st-century technology is enabling him to do his job even more accurately.
This is thanks to one of the country's most charismatic scientists, Louis Liebenberg, a man steeped in the culture and traditions of South Africa. Liebenberg doesn't call himself a scientist, even though he is an environmentalist and a philosopher. He calls himself a tracker.
He joined the Bushmen in the Kalahari to learn the subtle arts of identifying and tracking animals and wrote two books on the subject. In the process he became an expert on footprints and droppings, able to identify the droplets left by a female in season or the marks left by a buck rubbing his jaw over a bush. He learned to "read" these signs, and work out from the depth and splay of a print whether an animal was feeding or fleeing.
Then the scientist in his soul took over and he started problem-solving. The problem as he saw it was that most of the Bushmen trackers were illiterate, and that their sightings of animals had to be stored in their memories and verbally reported back at base camp where another person assembled a database. Why not, he reasoned, create a digital database using pictorial symbols so that the trackers could note the animals and their behaviour on the spot? And why not link this to a satellite to pinpoint the position accurately?
"Initially my interest was purely academic to trace the origin of science itself," he says. "But I soon found it had social and political implications. Tracking is a Stone Age, hunter-gatherer society technology, yet the trackers are fully modern human beings."
Liebenberg realised that modern life could easily interface with such an ancient skill, provided he could make his idea work. "I wanted to set up an illiterate database," he says. "The idea conceptualised about seven years ago. I was with the Bushmen on a bow and arrow hunt and I saw them mentally 'looking up' the footprints of animals on the hunt, comparing them to the images in their brains.
"I went to see Professor Edwin Blake, head of the department of computer science at the University of Cape Town, with this madcap idea of developing a better system so that Bushmen who can't read or write could use information and create their mental maps. I thought it would have enormous implications for eco-conservation.
"Professor Blake asked if I could develop a user interface and I said yes."
Liebenberg, 37, got together with Lindsay Steventon, 23, a brilliant young honours student, and together they developed CyberTracker Software. As the younger man wrote the complex software his partner drew the series of icon pictures that would help the Bushmen with their task.
Now the trackers monitor animals with a Mac notepad. When they see an animal or its tracks they tap on the icon of that animal. Next they tap on what the animal is doing feeding, sleeping, mating and other activities are all covered in neat little images that sometimes veer on the comical. Then they make a record of what other animals are in the vicinity.
An integrated Global Positioning System records the site of the observation using satellite navigation. When the "stop" button is pressed on the GPS, the information is saved, ready to be downloaded on the PC at the base camp. That information is then processed to create detailed maps showing animal movements and habits at any time of day, enabling conservationists to protect herds from natural and human predators and forecast mass movements.
Now the story of Liebenberg's adventures with the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Karoo National Park, and the development of his CyberTracker system, has been turned into a film which will be shown on The Discovery Channel next week.
The film was produced and directed by Charles Moore, 48, at the Cape Town-based Spring Studios. An independent film-maker since 1984, Moore went to the Southern Africa Film Festival last November and was asked to submit an idea for a documentary. A mutual friend introduced him to Liebenberg, he put forward his "pitch" and suddenly it was reality.
"We had to feature Louis with the trackers and that meant six weeks of solid shooting," he says. "That is very long for a 48-minute film.
"Louis was so close to the trackers there was a natural empathy which I wanted to capture.
"The social side is important, but so is the philosophy of tracking, and also the technical side. So the way to marry them up was to have a strong story and the story was Louis.
"The skills of the tracker are being lost, marginalised by governments. Louis's program could re-empower these people."
South African composer Nic Pickard wrote the soundtrack, using the music produced by the thumb piano of the M'bira Bushmen, and a hunting bow tapped like a violin. The rest of the sounds come from the grunts, growls and chirps of the desert wildlife and the soft, low voices of the Bushmen themselves.
The implications of CyberTracker are immense, both for the trackers themselves and for the natural world. It is a powerful new weapon against the poachers who prey not just on rhino and elephants but also many small mammals and reptiles not monitored by conservation agencies but which nevertheless support the entire eco-system.
"In the growing ecotourism industry, trackers play a key role in producing animals for game viewing and on wilderness trails," says Liebenberg. "On game viewing drives, trackers greatly enhance the efficiency of finding animals in the time available. And on wilderness walks and trails trackers can open up a new experience to tourists.
Softly, softly does it to track elephants in
South Africa's huge Kruger National Park
"These wilderness trails can also form an integral part of a wildlife monitoring and anti-poaching network. By having trackers on trails who can also recognise signs of poaching, the anti-poaching unit can be alerted. The best way to discourage poaching is to have a presence in the field throughout a nature reserve.
"Signs of intruders may be detected even when it is difficult to find footprints. For example, the tracks of animals fleeing indicates a disturbance, and if no signs of predators are found, further investigation may reveal human intruders. Trackers may also be able to tell if an animal was fleeing from a predator or a human from the way it was running.
"CyberTracker field computers are designed to be quick and easy to use, even by illiterate trackers. They can collect a large amount of data with little effort and communicate all their observations to the manager on a day-to-day basis; but also the system will store the information over time, long after the trackers may have forgotten the specific details."
Liebenberg now plans further versions of the software to include automatic statistical analysis of the data, increasing use of e-mail to feed all detail into a supercomputer at the University of Cape Town.
There will also be a CD-Rom which, he hopes, will encourage other modern men to learn the Stone Age skills of the tracker.
The Science of Tracking will be shown on The Discovery Channel on October 16 at 10pm
Next page: Bolshy bird guards a wildlife paradise
Arts (Mon - Fri) | British News | Business | Court page | Features (Mon - Fri) | Metro
(Sat) | Obituaries | Opinion | Sport | Vision
(Sat) | Weather | Weekend
(Sat) | Weekend Money
(Sat) | World News
| 
