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discussion / AI for Conservation  / 6 October 2025

Seeking AI Software for Automated Camera Trap Image Processing & Species Identification

Vincent Nachi

Vincent Nachi

I'm a junior ecologist with experience in fieldwork and wildlife monitoring using camera traps. I’ve worked on carnivore identification through the African Carnivore Wildbook, and have skills in data management, analysis, and spatial mapping using tools like ArcGIS. 
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Hello everyone,

I hope you're all doing well. I'm currently seeking recommendations for an AI software solution to streamline the processing of our camera trap project. We are working with a large dataset of images and are looking for a tool that can assist with the following primary objectives:

  1. Automatically delete all blank images (i.e., those without any detectable subjects).
  2. Filter and sort images into three categories: animals, people, and vehicles—each into their respective folders.
  3. Detect and identify species present in the images.

  4. Within the animal folder, flag and categorize key species of interest (SOI), including:

    • Painted Dogs
    • Lions
    • Leopards
    • Spotted Hyenas
    • Cheetahs
    • Servals
    • Civets
    • Honey Badgers
    • Ground Hornbills
    • Side-Striped Jackals
    • Black-Backed Jackals
    • African Wildcats
    • Caracals
    • Genets
    • Bat-Eared Foxes

    These species should be automatically sorted into their respective folders and renamed using our predefined coding system (e.g., ZXCLP for Painted Dogs, ZXCPP for Leopards, ZXCCC for Hyenas, etc.), based on a Camera Trap Tagging Codes File Sheet.

  5. Count the number of individuals detected per image for each of the key species of interest.
  6. Eliminate pseudo-replication, especially for frequently appearing species such as elephants.
  7. Export all processed data—including species identification, counts, and relevant metadata—into a structured Excel spreadsheet for analysis and reporting.

If anyone is using or aware of an AI platform, software, or pipeline that could effectively support this level of functionality, I would greatly appreciate your insights or recommendations. Ideally, the solution should support batch processing and be scalable for use in large-scale, long-term wildlife monitoring projects.

Thank you in advance for your support and suggestions!

Best regards,
Vincent Nachi 
Painted Dog Research (PDR)

Painted Dog Research (PDR) Ai Project.docx

Eugene Galaxy
@eugenegalaxy
Building Animal Detect: Software tool to process wildlife data in minutes using latest cool tech.
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6 October 2025 8:43am

Hey Vincent.

Our online platform Animal Detect checks almost all of your boxes, except renaming folders into codes, and eliminating pseudo-replications. However, we provide downloading of sorted images in species folders, so you would only need to rename them manually at the end, which would take just a couple of minutes.

I suggest you to create a free account and play around with some data in it: https://www.animaldetect.com

If you would like to know more, chat with me, or see a demo - we can talk over a call. :)

Carly Batist
@carlybatist  | she/her
ecoacoustics, biodiversity monitoring, nature tech
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7 October 2025 8:58pm

Some additional free & no-code platforms to check out -

Dan Morris
@dmorris
I help conservation scientists spend less time on boring stuff.
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9 October 2025 12:28am

I won't chime in to recommend a particular platform, rather to say that I would encourage you not to think of this as a search for a platform that will automate all of these steps: as a field, we're not quite to "automation" yet.  Rather, you have to get all of these steps done with some combination of human and AI effort, and I would encourage you to look for the platform that will help you get them done the fastest.  This is as much a question of ergonomics and personal preference as it is a question of AI.

For example, I wouldn't exclude a platform from consideration just because it can't tell a side-striped jackal from a black-backed jackal; that's a very small fraction of your images and a difficult task for AI.  If AI can mostly automate the review of your blanks and your common species (typically ungulates) and giant/easy species (e.g. elephants), that's a huge win, even if you rely entirely on human review for the more nuanced classification, including possibly the review of all of your focal species, where the cost of errors is higher.

All of that said, I try to keep track of all the platforms/tools I'm aware of here.