Game Monitoring
The DPWM is responsible for day-to-day activities to monitor game both inside and outside National Parks. This is done through vehicle and foot patrols. The Incident Book or Event Book System (IBMS) is an important tool used to monitor game in Parks, conservancies and other wildlife management areas.
The IBMS is a system used to monitor a range of activities, events and statistics in Namibia’s protected areas, including conservancies and neighbouring areas. This is a custom designed, user-friendly database, which stores the information and allows a range of summaries and outputs to be generated. The system links to the MIKE (Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants) programme.
This system that is used to collect data on items such as gate-entry statistics, patrol efforts, poaching incidents, off-takes (hunting, culling and mortalities), rainfall and veld conditions. Using this information, park managers can decide whether there are problems that require some form of management action. The system is also designed to assist park wardens to report to Head Office on a monthly basis and to evaluate the performance of their field staff. The IBMS was adapted for parks from a similar system being used in the communal area conservancies.
The database is housed under CONINFO. This data management system contains a wide range of information and data on Namibia’s protected areas, conservancies, community forests, concessions and other conservation areas. The CONINFO interface provides a user-friendly way to access the data, run analyses, and draw maps and so on.