Colette Terblanche, Project Manager for Peace Parks Foundation’s Combatting Wildlife Crime team, is an anti-poaching powerhouse. For more than five years, she has been committed to the daunting, and mounting, challenges of rhino protection, in a minority of women working in this field.
In the age of intense and escalating wildlife crime, poaching strategies continue to evolve and evade conservation tactics at pace. Teams must constantly develop sensor technology to outsmart criminals and safeguard southern Africa’s rhino populations.
Getting Smart
Pre-empting the pioneering cross-border translocation of 37 rhino from South Africa to Mozambique’s Zinave National Park from 2022 to 2023, where both white and black species had been extinct for more than four decades, Colette embraced the rhino sensor programme. She has been working tirelessly with SmartParks, a non-profit organisation which supports conservation efforts with the use of cutting-edge technology. Collaboratively, SmartParks and Peace Parks have been funding, developing and field testing the game-changing sensors.
Shoring up rhino security requires a suite of different approaches, specific to each protected area. Alongside strengthened ranger forces, surveillance aircraft and other protective resources, sensors deployed in Zinave National Park have helped immensely, contributing to a zero poaching track record to date. “But the sensors are not yet 100% spot-on,” she says, “Hence our ongoing efforts to help fine-tune the capabilities.” Referring to the widespread implementation of advanced ‘smart’ technology, she explains that all parks where Peace Parks is operational must be Smart Parks by 2030. Her responsibilities are huge.
Flying the Flag for Female Empowerment
Colette’s contribution to refining the sensors has been made with largely self-taught technological know-how, and invaluable hands-on skills needed to fit them to rhino in the field. The operational application of the sensors, after so much expert preparation and assessment, is an amazing achievement for her and the various partners she works with. Peace Parks anticipates that their upgrading efforts will be ongoing, involving a more expansive testing range.
It is an extremely tough working environment, but she is constantly proving that gender should not be a barrier. “There are very few women in this field at this stage,” Colette explains. “But as conservation technology and job opportunities become more prevalent, these roles are more accessible and there is greater scope for women to get involved. This applies to both IT specialists and field operatives.”
Organisations, project teams and individuals all contribute vitally to progressing recognition of women in this challenging realm. Colette embodies a positive can-do attitude and an aspirational mindset, vitally leveraging women’s roles in, historically, a man’s world of combating wildlife crime. From technological savvy to field-based grit, she hopes to inspire a generation of strong, skilled female conservationists ready to fight for wildlife head-on, and hands-on.
