Wildlife Research and Training Institute on Friday convened a high-level stakeholder validation meeting on the platform’s development.

📻 Breaking It Down

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 12 — Kenya is set to launch a National Wildlife Database next year in a landmark move aimed at strengthening conservation planning, wildlife management and policy formulation through a centralized repository of wildlife information.

The Wildlife Research and Training Institute (WRTI) on Friday convened a high-level stakeholder validation meeting in Kisumu to advance the development of the platform, which will consolidate decades of wildlife data currently held by government agencies, research institutions, conservation organizations, universities and community conservancies.

The initiative, anchored in Section 60 of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act, 2013, seeks to address long-standing challenges associated with fragmented wildlife information that has often been difficult to access, share and utilize for decision-making.

📌 What You Need to Know

Speaking during the meeting, WRTI Deputy Director for Research, David Ndereeh, said Kenya possesses vast volumes of wildlife data collected over many years, but much of it remains scattered across multiple institutions.

“We have a wealth of wildlife information generated over decades of research and monitoring. The challenge has been that the data is dispersed among various state and non-state actors,” said Dr. Ndereeh.

The National Wildlife Database is expected to become the country’s primary source of wildlife information, supporting biodiversity conservation, land-use planning, climate adaptation, wildlife disease surveillance, anti-poaching operations and mitigation of human-wildlife conflict.

According to WRTI, stakeholders attending the validation meeting reviewed the framework for integrating datasets into the platform, identified existing data gaps and provided technical input on governance structures, interoperability, quality assurance and long-term sustainability.

Dr. Ndereeh said the institute had already developed a prototype system and was now working with partners to validate, clean and migrate datasets into the platform ahead of its rollout.

“We verify the data together, clean it and validate the datasets before uploading them into the system that has already been developed,” he said.

📰 Source: Capital FM Kenya