You’re invited to the WILDLABS Variety Hour, our monthly community event connecting you to the exciting projects, research, and ideas that are happening in conservation tech right now.

You never know what you’ll find and who you’ll meet at our Variety Hour, and that’s part of the fun! You might catch speed talks from community members working around the world, learn from a leading conservation tech expert, discover a new tool, test your wildlife trivia skills, find a great opportunity - maybe you’ll even do all of the above.

The WILDLABS Variety Hour isn’t a show, or a lecture, or a workshop. It's an engaging, fun, and interactive gathering, giving you a welcoming space to share your own projects and resources, ask and answer questions, have insightful conversations, meet collaborators, make friends, and get to know the conservation tech community in a new way. 

Great ideas and discussions are sparked when people who share a passion for conservation tech unite. When you come along to the Variety Hour, you’re joining a space full of people who care about conservation tech just like you; when you leave the Variety Hour, we hope you’ll take away fresh inspiration and the knowledge that you belong to a global community who are making an impact in our field all around the world.

The Variety Hour: April 2026

Join us on April 29th at 11:00 EDT / 16:00 BST for a fantastic lineup of news, people, and projects. To come along, register here.

This month, we have three speed talks from Julien Rachiele-Tremblay, Kinley Ragan and Ruthmery Pillco Huarcaya as well as a long talk from Emily Dorne. 

We will hear about innovative tools and projects advancing wildlife research and conservation, including drone-deployed systems for high-resolution rainforest canopy monitoring, real-time acoustic detection of species and threats using solar-powered mesh networks, the use of GPS and camera collars to gain behavioral insights for Andean bear conservation, and best practices for designing custom AI training datasets to improve species classification in diverse habitats.

Some of these titles or speakers might look familiar to you, as they were among the most popular and highly-rated sessions at ICTC 2026. If you didn't have the chance to catch them then, now is the perfect time to join us!

Agenda

• Julien Rachiele-Tremblay | Drone-Deployed Scalable Solution for High-Resolution Canopy Monitoring: The Limelight
• Kinley Ragan (@kragan)| DuckLink-ing to Conservation: Acoustically Detecting Species and Their Threats In Real-Time
• Ruthmery Pillco Huarcaya (@Ruthmery)  | Seeing the unseen: GPS and camera collar insights to guide Andean Bear Conservation
• Intermission | The WILDLABS Quiz
• Emily Dorne (@emilydorne) | Designing Effective Training Datasets for Custom AI Models