Ancient skills and modern conservation: why tracking still matters

From reading spoor in the wilderness to strengthening conservation operations in Kruger National Park, professional tracking continues to demonstrate its relevance in modern conservation. 

For generations, tracking has been one of Africa’s most valuable ways of understanding the natural world. A footprint, a broken stem, disturbed soil or a subtle change in vegetation can reveal movement, behaviour and direction to an experienced tracker. 

Today, that knowledge is finding an increasingly important place within professional conservation. 

Tracker Academy has entered into a Technical Cooperation Agreement with South African National Parks (SANParks) to support rhino protection in Kruger National Park (KNP). The initiative includes advanced man-tracking training for field rangers, as well as the deployment of Tracker Academy graduates as dedicated Rhino Monitors to strengthen data collection and support patrols. 

For the Academy, this represents more than simply teaching people how to follow tracks. Its stated aim is to preserve and professionalise traditional tracking knowledge while demonstrating its practical value in conservation, wildlife monitoring, ecotourism and environmental education. Tracker Academy’s training programme is CATHSSETA-accredited and its tracker certificates are endorsed by FGASA. 

Professional tracking requires much more than recognising an animal’s spoor. 

Tracker Academy’s assessment framework includes track and sign identification, alarm-call interpretation and trailing. Candidates must demonstrate not only technical accuracy, but also interpretation, environmental awareness, decision-making and field safety. 

This combination of observation and judgement is particularly important when tracking takes place on foot in challenging wilderness environments. 

During 2025, Tracker Academy’s Lodge Tracker and Conservation Guardian students averaged approximately 1,500 hours in the field per student, while the average student experienced around 160 encounters with the Big Five on foot. The training also included extensive opportunities for animal and man tracking.  

These experiences help illustrate why tracking is not simply an interesting bush skill. It is a discipline that demands patience, concentration, physical endurance, interpretation and the ability to make sound decisions in the field. 

One of Tracker Academy’s central objectives is to ensure that traditional tracking knowledge is not lost but instead becomes part of a professionally recognised conservation skill set. 

The Academy describes wildlife tracking as an indigenous art form that evolved through human survival and says rapid urbanisation has contributed to the loss of traditional tracking knowledge across Southern Africa. Its approach is therefore not to treat tracking as mysterious or unteachable, but as a practical discipline that can be trained, assessed and continually improved. 

This professionalisation is particularly relevant to the guiding industry. 

For field guides, trackers and conservation practitioners, understanding spoor and sign is one part of a much broader ability to interpret the landscape. The more closely we learn to observe, the more information the bush can reveal. 

The Tracker Academy–SANParks partnership demonstrates how traditional knowledge can be applied within contemporary conservation systems. It also highlights an important principle for the guiding profession: technology and traditional knowledge do not have to compete. 

Tracker Academy is developing new assessment and technology tools while maintaining the tracker at the centre of the process. Its Deepspoor Tracker App, for example, is being developed using a growing library of more than 100,000 photographed examples of animal tracks and signs. The stated intention is to support recognition of animal sign and tracking knowledge rather than replace the act of tracking itself. 

For FGASA members, this is a useful reminder of the value of continually developing the fundamentals of our profession. 

A tracker reads the ground. A guide reads the landscape. 

And both require the same qualities that have always distinguished great practitioners in the bush: observation, knowledge, patience, curiosity and sound judgement. 

The technology may change. The conservation challenges may change. But the ability to understand what the landscape is telling us remains invaluable. 

Ancient skills. Modern conservation. A profession that continues to evolve.