Protecting Key Species And Their Habitats

The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) is a leading conservation organization based in South Africa that focuses on protecting threatened species and ecosystems. Established in 1973, EWT's mission is to conserve species, restore ecosystems, and support sustainable livelihoods by addressing environmental challenges through research, education, policy development, and hands-on fieldwork.

We began supporting EWT in 2023 on both the Eye In The Sky and Livestock Guardian Dogs projects

The Eye In The Sky Project (EITS) - Birds of Prey Programme

Illegal trade has seen thousands of vultures poisoned across Africa, devastating populations, and driving them rapidly towards extinction in the wild. Scavenging mammals, including Lions, Spotted Hyaenas and Leopards, are also severely impacted by poisoning. A key factor limiting the capacity to reduce or avoid the largescale loss of wildlife to poisoning is our ability to locate and respond quickly to poisoning events. To address this ominous threat in southern and east Africa, the EWT has used the natural sentinel and foraging behaviour of vultures to our advantage and coupled this with novel GPS-tracking technology; pioneering a rapid poisoning detection system, which we call Eye in the Sky.

Currently there over 100 vultures of five different species, and several Bateleurs, deployed for this system and covering approximately 2 million km2, which is monitored in near real-time via EarthRanger software. The GPS systems on these birds are pushing alerts through to various front-end platforms that are actively being used by response teams across Africa to react rapidly to poisoning events.

Since 2023 the Trust has helped:

  • Commit to the funding of 60 vulture tracking units over 3 years

  • Cover a range of over 500,000km2 - many areas being wildlife crime and poisoning hotspots

  • Remove over 3,000 snares across project sites

  • Fund the construction of a satellite vulture rehabilitation facility within Kruger National Park. This will allow us to achieve a long-held goal: building a smaller vulture treatment facility in the park. The facility, located in Shingwedzi at the ranger’s camp in central Kruger, will drastically improve the survival chances of poisoned vultures by eliminating the need for long-distance transport to our current rehab centre in Moholoholo.

  • Fund community awareness and vulture monitoring programmes over the next six months by employing local field rangers and guides from the local communities to assist with this important work. The aim is to upskill individuals and provide them with potential opportunity to further their careers in the conservation field.

White-backed Vulture being fitted with an iridium tracking device

Livestock Guardian Dogs Project

Guardian Dog Puppies

Heatmap showcasing the current coverage of Eye In The Sky system

EWT handler with guardian dog puppy

Satellite Vulture Treatment Centre in Shingwedzi, KNP

The aim of the LGD project is to reduce predation by Leopards, and other carnivores, on livestock, thereby improving farmers’ income and reducing retaliation killings. Through this, ultimately we aim to create safe spaces for these large predators to roam. EWT have placed 235 LGDs on farms since 2006, with a 95% reduction in stock losses.

Through the successful widespread roll out of LGD, EWT aims to reduce the retaliatory killing of large carnivores, including Leopard, Cheetah, and Wild Dogs, effectively creating carnivore-safe spaces. They also plan to make the work scalable so that they can transfer the knowledge learnt from these communities in the Waterberg Biosphere Reserve to similar work that they are busy with in the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve (Soutpansberg) and beyond. They also have established an LGD breeding facility in Rebone, the first of its kind, creating a green enterprise initiative that feeds into the project’s longer-term sustainability. Similarly, EWT aims to train champions from each community in the techniques used to work with LGDs – a train-the-trainer exercise – that will ensure the continued sustainability of the project.

Since 2023 the Trust has helped:

  • Fund the implementation of over 50 camera traps to determine predator movements

  • Fund the implementation of 7 wildlife collars for lions, hyenas, leopards and painted dogs

  • Fund the breeding and upbringing of guardian dog puppies that will be distributed to farmers throughout the region to deter predator conflict