Three agents from SNP’s Biomonitoring and SMART team participated in a 5-day workshop in Kinshasa from March 18 to 22 organized by WWF Africa’s Regional Biomonitoring Unit (WWF ROA). During this workshop, participants learned about specifics of forest elephant monitoring in forest clearings (so-called bais) and how to set up a database for managing and processing camera trap images. The next step will be to identify the forest clearings in the park where the methodology will be applied and propose a strict study methodology.

It is therefore necessary to determine the sites where the camera traps will be installed, to map the access tracks of the elephants and to delimit the surveillance area as to cover an area of 25 to 30 km² around the bais. The Salonga Park Management Unit has set itself the goal of monitoring six clearings in the park.

During this workshop, the opportunity arose to :

• Discuss the methodology and development of a data collection protocol and the management of data in a special habitat category (bai),
• Identify weaknesses in the SMART data model to help reduce data collection errors with the Cyber Tracker software,
• Work with the SMART data of the bais (forest openings) and camera trap images.