TRAINING IN BIODIVERSITY MONITORING FOR PROTECTED AREAS STAFF

One of the key roles of NACRES is to assist Georgia’s protected areas in building their capacities. The majority of NACRES projects have been directly related to the improvement of the Protective Areas management and their effectiveness as a major tool for biodiversity conservation. One way of strengthening any protected area is to increase the skill level and qualifications of its staff members. NACRES won a tender announced with the GEF/World Bank funded Georgia Protected Areas Project for providing training to the staff of Vashlovani, Lagodekhi, Batsara-Babaneuri and Tusheti protected areas; this project also involved training sessions in biodiversity monitoring for relevant staff members of the Protected Areas Department. The assignment started in May 2006 and will be completed in June 2007.

In 2006, within the terms of the above-mentioned assignment, NACRES team members conducted training sessions for the staff of Vashlovani, Lagodekhi, Batsara-Babaneuri and Tusheti protected areas. The training was targeted to gathering field data as necessary for effective biodiversity monitoring. Later, in 2007, a comprehensive biodiversity monitoring handbook and a field guide is to be published and this educational material will be especially designed for these and other Georgian protected areas. Moreover, a general residential training will be organised for biodiversity monitoring planning and implementation, including field data analysis. The training will last 10 days attended by appropriate staff members representing all of the Georgian protected areas i.e. resource management specialists or research & monitoring specialists, heads of rangers services, as well as employees representing the Department of Protected Areas.

Field training sessions on the target protected areas were planned taking into account that (i) most (if not all) members of the target protected areas lacked any experience of field data collection for biodiversity monitoring - many rangers had in fact been just recently recruited, (ii) field trainings would not have caused any delays or interference in normal functioning of the protected area and (iii) the groups should not have been too large in order to ensure best results and create the possibility of providing an effective learning environment and working on an individual level.

The following general guidelines were elaborated and applied by the trainers in planning and implementation of field training sessions on each of the target protected areas:

• Divide rangers in training groups and design a schedule together with the senior park management
• Keep record of participant attendance to make sure that each participant attends every component of the training (this will allow for some greater flexibility for rangers – anybody unable to attend a particular component with his own group would have a second chance to join in another group on a different day in order to catch up on the material covered)
• Each new component of the field training began with a brief theoretical introduction and overview
• Field activities last as long as needed for effective learning outcomes but still it depends on the time made available to the participants by the park management
• The following day of each session begins with the review of already discussed components (and this allows opportunities for additional explanations, or to even repeat a practical sessions, if needed).

Field training was dedicated to the following topics:

• What is biodiversity monitoring and why it is needed for protected areas?
• General aspects of field data collection in biodiversity monitoring
• Data collection for large mammals:
  • Direct (visual) observations
  • Footprint identification
  • Use of remote sensing cameras (photo-trapping)
• Data collection on plant species and plant communities (depending on season)
• Use of GPS
• Use of maps
• Any other issue or question that may arise from the participants, with the exception of those falling into the scope of the theoretical training (not practical)

Despite the fact that each of the target protected areas possessed GPS handsets, the rangers had virtually no experience in using the devices. Staff of the Vashlovani National Park proved to the exception. Vashlovani is institutionally one of the most developed protected areas anywhere in Georgia. In addition NACRES in close cooperation with its management and active involvement of its staff members has been conducting various research projects and activities on this protected areas for many years, which has included the use of radio-tracking and photo-trapping techniques. Consequently, rangers from the Vashlovani National Park were already familiar with many of the topics to be covered in the field training.

With few exceptions practically all participants of the field training sessions from all four protected areas showed a remarkable degree of motivation and ability to learn more about data collection and to become familiar with new technologies. Despite differences in individual capabilities, most participants quickly learned how to make use of a GPS on a general user level. They were able to learn some of the most useful functions and operations that were relevant to their everyday work. For example, the rangers learned: marking a point and recording it in a GPS, transferring a location onto map, search for previously recorded waypoints and navigation to a selected one, taking a location from a map and entering it into GPS for subsequent navigation. Rangers were quite amused to play a treasure hunting game using GPS - it proved a useful practice for acquiring skills of using this device. The game basically involved the following: one of the trainers would hide “treasure”, a bottle of beer or pack of cigarettes and take GPS readings for the site on a piece of paper. Each participant was given one set of coordinates and they had to enter it into a GPS and follow up by going out in search of the hidden treasure. Every participant successfully navigated to the targeted site and found the concealed “treasure”.