Our Story

A brief timeline of our history

Pre-WildTrack

1992 - 2000

Alibhai and Jewell started working with the Department of National Parks in Zimbabwe to monitor black rhino across Zimbabwe.

1996

Technology breakthrough #1: Agfa donated four digital cameras to take images of footprints - this allowed us to hugely speed up data collection!

1998

Technology breakthrough #2: JMP software allowed them to visualize data more effectively and identify the factors contributing to reduced fertility rates.

2000

Technology breakthrough #3: Developed the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT) that is able to identify species, individuals, sex and age-class from footprints.

2001

Published three foundational papers 1) Demonstrating that invasive monitoring methods were causing problems with rhino fertility 2) Showed that radio-collars were failing 3) Described how footprints could be used to monitor populations of endangered species.

2002

At the request of other research groups, started working to develop footprint identification for other species.

Won the Smithsonian Computerworld Award in the Environment, Energy and Agriculture.

2003 - 2012

Conducted fieldwork across 5 continents and published widely on Footprint Technology for a range of species from White rhino in Southern Africa to Amur tiger in China.


WildTrack

2011

WildTrack officially registered as a 501(c)3 in North Carolina, USA.

2012

Relocated to the USA from Europe. Joined the Pimm Lab at Duke University as Adjunct Faculty.

2013

Ethics in wildlife monitoring paper published.

2015

New developments in monitoring technology published.

2017

Started testing the use of Drones for wildlife monitoring. Featured in an Emmy-award winning documentary on WildTrack’s use of traditional ecological knowledge and technology to monitor cheetah.

2018

Started working with the Namibian government to design a footprint identification protocol for monitoring black rhino in the Conservancy program.

2020

Won the 2020 Association for Unmanned Vehicle Services International (AUVSI) XCELLENCE award in the Humanitarian category.

Technology breakthrough #4: AI-powered footprint classification.

Started working with UC Berkeley to design an AI-powered pipeline to automate the identification and classification of footprint images. Won the Hal R. Varian Capstone award for best project.

Featured in TerraX documentary that reached 5 million viewers in Europe.

2021

Started collaborating with Harvard University groups on further development of the AI pipeline.

2022

Won the Otter Oscar award from the International Otter Survival Foundation (IOSF) for a research paper documenting the use of footprint identification technology to identify 3 endangered species of otters using the same habitat.

WildTrackAI app for iOS and Android released in Beta

2023

More things to come!