How SODAQ and Monogoto Are Using Connectivity to Stop Poaching Before It Happens

Every 10 hours, a rhino is killed by poachers.

The WWF estimates that roughly 20,000 African elephants are lost to poaching each year for their ivory tusks. In less than a century, their population has dropped from 13 million to roughly 415,000. Rhinos face an equally uncertain future, with only around 70,000 remaining in the wild.

For conservation teams, the challenge isn’t just protecting endangered animals. It’s finding poachers before they strike.

In 2017, working alongside researchers from Wageningen University, SODAQ set out to solve a difficult problem: how technology can prevent poaching without creating new risks.

Together, SODAQ and Monogoto built an IoT-powered wildlife monitoring solution that flips the equation: rather than tracking the hunted, it watches the watchers and alerts rangers before the trigger is pulled.

SODAQ is a leading provider of low-power IoT hardware and tracking solutions for enterprise and environmental applications. Its portfolio of solar-powered devices helps organizations deploy connected solutions in locations where traditional infrastructure is unavailable.

Wildlife Tracking

The Challenge

Traditional wildlife tracking systems rely on GPS tagging attached directly to the animals.

The problem? If the location of the wildlife data is leaked or intercepted, those devices serve as a roadmap leading poachers directly to those endangered animals. Researchers needed a solution that could:

  • Detect poaching activity before animals are harmed
  • Avoid exposing the location of endangered animals
  • Operate in remote areas with limited infrastructure
  • Run on low-power hardware
  • Deliver reliable alerts that rangers can quickly act on

Equally important, the solution required connectivity that could reliably operate in remote environments where coverage and infrastructure are often limited.

The Solution

Animals typically change their behavior when they detect suspicious activity or threats in their environment. By deploying tracking technology, we can monitor for unnatural movements or patterns that occur out of the ordinary. In these instances, we can deduce that something suspicious may be nearby. Studies from Wageningen University revealed that animals often distinguish between rangers, tourists, and poachers, changing their behavior when a threat enters the area. By monitoring these behavioral changes, researchers can detect suspicious activity without revealing the location of protected wildlife.

And rather than tracking the location of rhinos or elephants, researchers focused on “sentinel animals” such as zebras.

To do so, SODAQ developed solar-powered tracking devices designed for ultra-low-power operation in remote environments. The devices collect behavioral data and transmit it through a LoRaWAN-based monitoring network. Then, Monogoto provides the connectivity infrastructure that helps keep data flowing from the field to monitoring systems, ensuring conservationists receive timely alerts when unusual activity is detected.

The Results

The result is a secure, low-power wildlife monitoring network that protects sensitive location data while providing rangers with actionable insights into poaching activity.

Key outcomes include:

  • Continuous monitoring across remote conservation areas
  • Real-time visibility into potential threat activity
  • Protection of sensitive wildlife location data
  • Long-term operation through solar-powered, low-maintenance hardware
  • A scalable model for future wildlife conservation deployments