discussion / AI for Conservation  / 21 April 2026

Biowatch: a free, open-source desktop app for camera trap analysis

Hi everyone :wave: 
I wanted to share something we've been building that feels right at home in this community: 

Biowatch, a free and open-source desktop app for wildlife researchers and conservationists working with camera trap data.

The idea is simple: everything runs locally on your machine. Species identification models, image browsing, spatial maps, temporal activity analysis — no uploads, no accounts, no tracking. 

It's CamtrapDP-compatible for clean import/export with GBIF, and works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It can handle images and videos. We'd really love feedback from folks here — especially on which models you'd like to see integrated next, and what analyses would actually save you time in the field. 

Download + docs: https://www.earthtoolsmaker.org/tools/biowatch/
Github repository: https://github.com/earthtoolsmaker/biowatch 

 

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Chris Nicholas
@chrisgnicholas  | he/him/it
Society for Conservation GIS
IT 'Forest Gump' veteran in remote sensing/location services/XR/IoT ML/Agentic AI
Conversation starter level 2
Poster level 1
Commenter level 2

cool! Bravo! 

Since it looks like this was done in electron, wondering how unreasonable it might be to craft a web version of this (and other cool things EarthToolsMaker is making!) as a pre-installed package on a hefty local/onsite/LAN-based storage and compute 'appliance' device, being discussed in Edge Computing. Or perhaps the appliance might perform some companion on-site data management piece of the puzzle, (alongside equally vast volumes of bioacoustic, etc data on-site).
 

This looks amazing and I look forward to trying it out when I get the chance! 

Just wondering, when it comes to the AI recognitions, is there a way to "rename" the recognitions that were incorrect?