Long-term Monitoring of Wilderness

Due to vegetation, infrastructure limitations, and socioeconomic factors, Central Africa remains a highly challenging environment for wildlife monitoring.

Even the largest animals, such as elephants, often escape observation and remain poorly understood.

This lack of information complicates—or directly prevents—effective conservation efforts. We therefore participate in monitoring projects across several areas, with our longest-running work taking place in the northern Congolese border region (ETIC) together with local partners from WWF Congo and colleagues from the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Ústí nad Labem Zoo, and Liberec Zoo.

The project began in 2019 as part of Expedition Neuron. Most data are collected through dozens of camera traps and audio recorders.

We focus on elephants, great apes, leopards, and rare species such as the black colobus monkey, sharing collected data with relevant partners while continuing to seek students interested in further analysis and outputs.

An integral part of the project also involves detecting poaching activity in selected areas. We use camera traps to monitor additional locations in Congo (around Tsoulou) and Chad.

Among other findings, we have documented remarkable behavior of forest elephants upon discovering elephant carcasses.