“App”licable action for Asian elephant conservation
Hi, I’m Matthew, Senior Director of Information Technology here at the Oklahoma City Zoo. As part of my job I am always looking for opportunities to incorporate technology in our organization and with our conservation partners to streamline and improve processes.
In May of 2024, I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as a technologist to visit Sri Lanka. One of our conservation and research partners, The Sri Lanka Elephant Project (SLEP), reached out earlier this year with a problem: they needed to build a new database solution to aid them with their research of Asian elephants in the field after outgrowing the existing platform. I took on this challenge and built an app backed by Microsoft’s cloud and then traveled more than 27 hours across the globe to hand deliver the app to the team.
It might sound a little unnecessary in a digital world, but being able to meet face to face with the SLEP research team and experience firsthand what they are doing out in the field provides a whole new level of perception that digital communication can’t replicate. Better understanding the challenges they face helped me adjust and update this new mobile app in the field for the team. Coding out updates had its own set of hurdles as connectivity can be sparse and there are government-instituted rolling blackouts during the day due to financial strains.
Over the course of three weeks in Sri Lanka I developed a deeper understanding of this country and the culture of the people who live here. Elephants are inseparable in the culture, for thousands of years humans and Asian elephants lived in a symbiosis. Unfortunately, that relationship is becoming unbalanced. Human and elephant conflicts are on the rise, mainly because humans are expanding territories and cutting down forests to make way for more farmland and infrastructure. That puts pressure on the Asian elephant populations as their natural habitats are disappearing. In a country that is locked in by the surrounding ocean, where can they go?
The OKC Zoo exists, in part, to participate in making positive actionable change to our world, which is why we partner with SLEP. Part of SLEP’s goal is to conduct animal-centered and human-centered research in Sri Lanka to inform strategies that would mitigate these growing conflicts. In the grand scheme of it all, the mobile app I made isn’t necessarily saving the world here, but it does provide a unique opportunity to assist those who are trying.
August is Asian Elephant Awareness Month, a global movement to bring attention to the plight Asian elephants are facing and inspire the public to take conservation action through a social media campaign, #AsianElephantAwarenessMonth. The Zoo is proud to partner with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and global conservation partners to raise awareness of these beloved and endangered animals. Share your love for elephants on social media and join those being “herd” with #AsianElephantAwarenessMonth and remember to tag @okczoo.
The Oklahoma City Zoo is home to a multi-generational herd of eight Asian elephants with a new addition expected in 2025. Asian elephants are endangered and face unique challenges that threaten the species’ survival. Asian elephant populations in the wild have fallen below 40,000. The 13 nations that make up the natural habitat of Asian elephants contain the densest human population on the planet and, as a result, vital habitat for elephants has been reduced by 85 percent over the last 40 years.
This blog post was written by Matthew Word, Senior Director of Information Technology at Oklahoma City Zoo.
