• About us
    SMART Partnership and Governance
    © James Slade/Re:wild
About us

Protected areas are the cornerstone of nature conservation. Despite their vital role in the prevention of species extinctions, protected areas continue to be poorly resourced and managed, with less than a quarter providing effective protection.

In an effort to make protected areas more successful at preventing the loss of nature, in 2011 nine leading conversation organizations joined forces to create the SMART partnership. Our response to the unprecedented loss of wildlife, in alignment with global policies and scientific priorities, is to support the management of conservation areas providing refuge and a safe haven to threatened fauna and flora.

SMART Partnership

The SMART Partnership is a groundbreaking collaborative effort, unlike any other currently in the conservation realm. It is through the global reach of the Partnership that we have achieved rapid, scalable, successful adoption of SMART.


We have secured longstanding sustainability of SMART through the commitment of eight global conservation agencies to our long-term support.

The SMART Approach
The SMART approach to support conservation areas includes: cutting-edge technology, building conservation capacity, and empowering a global network of SMART conservation practitioners. Our conservation technology platform includes desktop, mobile, and cloud-based components. This platform allows conservationists to easily collect, analyze and act on a wide range of data relevant for protecting wildlife and wild places.

The SMART platform is free, easy to use and deploy, and has made substantial contributions to nature conservation efforts in over 100 countries and 1,200 sites worldwide. Our new strategic plan recognizes that technology alone will not solve the conservation crisis, so places great emphasis on capacity development and empowering our user community to manage conservation areas effectively, leveraging SMART tools.


The SMART Approach

SMART Governance

We developed a strong governance structure to foster a broad and deep community of users and developers to ensure further software development, costs and maintenance can be shared and sustained. The Partnership is managed by a Steering Committee, which implements work according to a 5 year strategic plan.

Steering Committee
Richard Bergl
Director of Conservation, Education & Science, North Carolina Zoo
Eric Schmidt
Executive Director, Wildlife Protection Solutions
Alexa Montefiore
Associate Director, Conservation Strategy & Partnerships Wildlife Conservation Society
Rohit Singh
Director, Wildlife Enforcement and Zero Poaching, WWF
Elsabe van der Westhuizen
Technical Advisor, Frankfurt Zoological Society
Mike Hoffmann
Head, Wildlife Recovery Zoological Society of London
Xia Stevens
Africa Coordinator - Data Management Unit - Conservation Technology Panthera
Barney Long
Senior Director, Conservation Strategies Re:wild
SMART Leadership
Richard Bergl
SMART Steering Committee Chair Director of Conservation, Education & Science/North Carolina Zoo
Mônica Harris
Program Manager, SMART
Anthony Dancer
SMART Chief Capacity Officer Conservation Monitoring & Technology Lead, ZSL
Jonathan Palmer
SMART Chief Technology Officer Senior Director Conservation Technology/WCS
Drew Cronin
SMART Technology Council Chair Associate Curator of International Conservation
James Slade
SMART Capacity Council Chair Wildlife Crime Prevention Officer/Re:wild