After five weeks of thorough application review and thoughtful deliberation, we are delighted to officially announce the winners of the Boring Fund 2025.

Now in its second year, the Boring Fund has grown to support even more projects tackling the essential but often overlooked foundations of conservation technology. This year, we received 999 applications, a 334% increase from last year. The overwhelming response highlights just how critical this need is and how much more there is to be done to bridge the gap across the sector. Building on this momentum, we are actively seeking additional funding and partnerships to ensure even more vital projects can find support in the years ahead. We are also exploring opportunities to engage partners to offer in-kind support to our grantees.

Each submission was carefully evaluated by multiple reviewers against our rigorous eligibility and selection criteria, with all applicants receiving feedback based on how far their proposal progressed in the process. The final shortlist was then shared with our partners at Arm and reviewed by our selection committee before the awardees were chosen and contacted.

With the review process now complete and contracts finalised, we are proud to introduce the winners of the Boring Fund 2025!

Over the coming days, we’ll be publishing dedicated discussion threads for each winning project. These spaces will give WILDLABS members the opportunity to learn more, engage directly with the teams, and explore the potential for future collaboration.

“The Boring Fund provides a rare opportunity to fund the nuts and bolts of research we all rely on” - Max Czapanskiy, The Open Biologging Portal: A (Meta) Database of Wildlife Biologging Data Availability

Order in the Wild: Streamlining 35 Years of Predator Data

@pbrack68 @KViolet @hollyatkinson @lbierh @Lnovo 

Africa’s longest-running wild dog study is cleaning and modernizing 35+ years of carnivore records. A local curator will unify ID codes, link photo diaries, and standardize databases, making this globally important dataset searchable and ready for platforms like Wildbook.

Project location: Botswana

Discovering sounds through visualizations and metadata on FishSounds.net

@AudreyLooby @svela @kmurchy @KieranCox @BrittnieSpriel @hldavies @haileyshafer3 

An online library of 1,300+ fish sound recordings is being completed with missing metadata, acoustic traits, and visualizations to create a fully searchable global resource to power conservation, passive acoustic monitoring, and the discovery of the underwater soundscape.

Project location: Canada

Creating Global Open-Access Ground-Truth Datasets for Insect Monitoring

@briannajohns @hikinghack @wellreadpanda @Hubertszcz 

By labelling thousands of insect images, this project will create open datasets to retrain the AI behind the Mothbox, an automated insect monitoring tool. The improved models will boost accuracy worldwide and release standardized resources for biodiversity monitoring.

Project location: Panama

LINC: Connecting Lions, Connecting Landscapes

@Nadia @NeevShah @StephDolrenry @sglee @habibam @RapheyH 

LINC is a free, open-source platform that uses AI to standardize lion IDs across Africa. Funding will support cloud services, AI upgrades, and onboarding resources to strengthen collaborative lion conservation through better accuracy, stability, and adoption.

Project location: Africa wide

Watching the wild: local communities leading biodiversity monitoring in the Cerrado

@lebenavalli @lalacorino @Luma_Astun 

A two-week hands-on course plus an open-access Portuguese manual will teach rural communities to use drones, camera traps, and data analysis for biodiversity monitoring. This replicable training builds local capacity and shares resources globally.

Project location: Brazil

Sorting for Saving: Managing Camera Trap Data For Better Conservation of Steppe Mammals

@yazula @ilya @Irina_Grigoryeva @IrinaVyushkova 

With over 100 million images from 10+ years of surveys, ACBK and the Manul Working Group will build a searchable database of camera trap image data and conduct baseline analyses. This massive dataset will be transformed into vital biodiversity insights for conservation and data sharing.

Project location: Kazakhstan

Behind the Scenes: Upgrading software packages in support of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System and NatureCounts

@CatherineJardine @dlepage @lberrigan 

Birds Canada will modernize and secure the infrastructure behind critical platforms for global wildlife data, Motus and NatureCounts. These upgrades will prevent outages, eliminate cybersecurity risks, and protect conservation data relied on by thousands worldwide.

Project location: Global

SaolaAI: An Offline Solution for Camera Trap Data Analytics

@huyennguyen @panda1835 

This project will deploy a secure, offline AI tool to classify camera trap images for government and conservation partners. With training and locally adaptable software, it will accelerate biodiversity monitoring and build national capacity for AI-powered conservation.

Project location: Vietnam

Mangrove Guardians - Communities Harnessing Global Tools

@PKagwa @Maresi @Hazeez @Mminoo @Chinyavu 

By training rangers and local custodians, creating guides in English and Swahili, and fostering peer support, this project will scale community use of the Global Mangrove Watch to facilitate timely action on mangrove data alerts and stronger coastal conservation.

Project location: Kenya

The Open Biologging Portal: a (meta)database of wildlife biologging data availability

This project will turn a vast systematic review of over 4,000 studies into a searchable web and API database. Standardized metadata on species, sensors, and deployments will unlock biologging insights, advancing open science and helping practitioners find and reuse critical data.

Project location: Global

“This award comes at a crucial moment for our organization and for me personally. It shows how important it is to bring technology and conservation into local contexts and to make sure that people on the ground are at the front of decision-making, with the skills and resources they need to lead." - Letícia Benavalli, Watching the wild: local communities leading biodiversity monitoring in the Cerrado

 

Looking Ahead

The continued success of The Boring Fund would not be possible without the invaluable support of our partners at Arm, the company building the future of computing. In addition to providing the core funding for this initiative, Arm played an integral role evaluating applications. Together, we’re exploring ways their engineering team can support the 10 granted projects. We extend our sincere thanks to Arm for their ongoing commitment to the growth of this programme and, by extension, to securing the foundations of the conservation technology sector as a whole.

We’re excited to share that WILDLABS and Arm will once again be partnering for another round of the Awards in 2026! Building on this year’s success, we aim to further expand the reach and impact of the programme. If you’re interested in getting involved or supporting this initiative, we’d love to hear from you. To help us scale our support for even more essential projects, please get in touch with [email protected].

We look forward to building on this momentum and to continuing to support a global community of adopters, scalers and innovators working at the intersection of technology and conservation.