Conserving and studying tortoises: A local community visual-tracking or radio-tracking approach?

A management concern for any endangered species is how to allocate limited resources for the most conservation benefit. Ideally, management decisions should be based upon scientific experiments that compare different methods. We therefore compared activity range and center estimates of the endangered Egyptian tortoise, Testudo kleinmanni, from data gathered by local people visually tracking tortoises and through the use of radio-tracking. Our results showed that although radio-tracking requires less effort, visually tracking tortoises can provide similar activity range (minimum convex polygon (MCP) and 95% kernel density (KD)) and activity center estimates (50% KD). Our study shows that conservation programs, with limited budgets, should hire local people to achieve both direct conservation action and carry out scientific studies to protect an endangered species. In addition, hiring local people increases conservation awareness in the greater community, is a source of pride because indigenous knowledge and skills are recognized, and provides financial opportunities to protect wildlife in an area in which the few economic opportunities often involve harvesting wildlife.