“Sasa, hi ni GPS…kama simu.” (Now, this is a GPS…kind of like a cell phone.) Chunde is explaining to the village leaders we’re working with as part of my domestic-dog demography research what a GPS unit is and how to use it.

Field Assistant Chunde Bigambo trains local leaders how to census people—and dogs—in their region. The results benefit conservation work and communities alike.

Many of these villages don’t have maps, so it can be difficult to identify parts of the village where dogs are not vaccinated or where disease outbreaks tend to occur. A new element we’re incorporating this year is the collection of village spatial distribution data?i.e., how households are distributed geographically throughout the village.

We trained village leaders to collect this data with us. While it took some practice, Chunde was an excellent teacher, and we’ve already received several completed censuses. In addition to the GPS coordinates, the leaders are counting the number of people and dogs in each household. They’re also writing down which households have vaccinated dogs. I later type up these data and present them to the village and district leaders.

This is valuable data for me because it gives me an estimate of the total dog population in the villages, and I can track changes from year to year. Moreover, this data has already proven extremely useful for the villages, because they now have an estimate of total people, children and households in their village. Last year, for example, Buyubi village used our census data to obtain mosquito nets from a government anti-malaria campaign!

Anna Czupryna