I noticed the site being annoyingly slow some time last week. Thank you for clearing that up, for finding the cause and solving the issue.

I'm not claiming deep knowledge on AI, but as a member this community, I'd be happy to give you my insights.

For starters: I am not categorically against bots scraping 'my' content, whether for AI training purposes, search engines, or other purposes. In principle, I find it a good thing that this forum is open to non-member users, and to me that extends to non-member use. Obviously, there are some exceptions here. For example when locations of individuals of endangered species are discussed, that should be behind closed doors.

Continuing down this line of reasoning, apparently it matters to me how 'my' content is being used. So, if someone wants to make an AI to aid nature conservation, I say, let them have it. There is the practical side of scraping activities that may be blocking or hindering the site, but there may be practical solutions for this. I don't know, say, have special opening hours for such things, or have the site engine prepare the data and make it available as a data dump somewhere.

Since purpose matters, organizations or individuals wanting to scrape the site should be vetted and given access or not. This is far more easily said than done. However, every step in the direction would be worth the while, because most technology publicly discussed here has good use for nature conservation, but equally bad use for nature destruction. For example, it's good to acoustically monitor bird sounds to monitor species, but also comes in handy when you are in the exotic bird trafficking business.

One could argue that since we allow public access, we should not care either about why bots are scraping the site. I would not go that far. After all, individual people browsing the site with nefarious purposes in mind is something else than a bot systematically scraping the entire site (or sections thereof) for bad purposes. It's a matter of scale.

Hi Luke, sounds like an interesting project! One thing to note is the ultrasonic Wildlife Acoustics unit you're looking at is already fairly directional. Take a look at the horizontal directionality plot towards the bottom:

You can see that for the relevant frequencies for slow lorises ultrasonic calls (40-60 kHz), there is 25-30 dB difference between 0 and 180 horizontal degrees. It's not perfect, but is close to some directional mics, and if it works well enough for your project it would save a lot of time and testing!

If you do choose to integrate an external directional microphone, be careful with microphone placement to avoid potential ultrasonic reflections from any hard flat surface like a tree trunk, water surface, or the instrument housing itself. Here's an example of some echo calls from reflective surfaces from bat vocalizations: 

It would be helpful to hear how you plan on obtaining behavioral information (and what kind) to correlate with vocalizations? Observations, cameras, biologgers, etc.? This could inform responses a bit more.

Very useful! Thanks a lot!

Hi Phani,

An entry point might be to participate in a challenge related to conservation on:

• Kaggle
• DrivenData
• FruitPunch
• Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior

You could also reach out to a conservation organization (e. g. WWF or something smaller and more local) and ask them directly whether there's an opportunity for you to volunteer, perhaps even suggest an idea and maybe they find it useful.

I hope you find an opportunity you're looking for!

Hello and welcome to WILDLABS @loveness :) 

What a great intro to what you are doing and interested in pursuing! I'd like to help direct you to our resources page, where you can check out multiple open career and academic opportunities from across your region that are posted regularly by the community. Find our Resources page linked here. 

Which specific areas within conservation/conservation technology are you most interested in at the moment? We have over 32 specialised groups in our community you could explore here to help guide you as you go along your career journey :) 

Best wishes!