WILDLABS logoWildlabs.net : La red de tecnología para la conservación

WILDLABS logoWildlabs.net : La red de tecnología para la conservación

Grupo

Base comunitaria / Canal de noticias

La base de la comunidad WILDLABS es el lugar ideal para familiarizarse con todo lo que ofrece nuestra plataforma comunitaria, estar al tanto de las novedades y oportunidades, y conocer nuevos amigos y colaboradores.

Curadores del grupo

discusión

Welcome to WILDLABS!

WILDLABS Team

29 Octubre 2015 5:16pm

Hello and welcome to the WILDLABS community! With 15,000 members and counting, we want to get to know you a little better. In a couple of...

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Hazel Borbón

8 July 2026 5:10pm

Hi! Welcome to WILDLABS. I'm Hazel, a Data Scientist from Costa Rica, working on PantheraID, an individual jaguar identification system built on a CNN ensemble. I'm actually in the middle of a modelling challenge right now: balancing dataset cleaning (removing near-duplicate frames to avoid data leakage) against the resulting smaller dataset size, and its effect on generalization. Would love to hear your perspective if you have experience with small/imbalanced datasets, might reach out if that's alright!

Alexander Schwartz

8 July 2026 7:26pm

Hi everyone, I'm Alex, founder of ASD Technologies. I've spent years developing miniature, ultra-low-power sensors and biologging devices for medical robotics as well as wildlife and movement-ecology research — GPS and acoustic loggers, physiological sensors, and modular animal-borne tags.

We've recently merged with a global edge-AIoT company, which is letting us push more on-device intelligence — onboard ML and better connectivity — into field hardware. I'm excited about what that opens up for bioacoustics and remote monitoring.

I'm here mainly to learn from this community and to give back where I can. Happy to talk shop on tag miniaturization, ultra-low-power design, on-animal acoustics, or edge ML — feel free to reach out if any of that is useful to your work.

(For context, our work lives at https://asd-tech.com, but I'm here first and foremost to connect and contribute.)

Aaron Crook

9 July 2026 1:07pm

Hey everyone, my name is Aaron and I am an aerospace engineering student from the UK. I am passionate about wildlife and conservation, and am determined to use my degree to help! I look forward to learning more about the work being done and getting to know the community!

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discusión

Camera trap recommendations

Stephanie M.

2 April 2026 11:40pm

Hi everyone! I’m looking for camera trap recommendations for a pilot study in Rwanda focused mostly on capturing small to large mammals (both domestic and wild).I’m hoping to find...

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Susan Cheyne

18 May 2026 6:18pm

Hi, are you looking to import these? Do you have any import tax considerations? This could impact which models you buy. I have been using Acorn models, very reliable and provide photo and 4K video with sound options.

Best wishes

Susan

Stephanie M.

6 June 2026 3:44am

Thank you everyone for your recommendations! We were awarded the grant, so I will share this information with our team, taking all your advice into consideration with our budget. 

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discusión

Unlock New Features by Earning Your Community Involvement Badge!

Jake Burton

14 Marzo 2024 11:54am

(Edited in Feb 2026) Hello WILDLABS Community!You can earn badges on your profile to showcase your activity or unlock new features. (Learn about badges here.) ...

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Jake Burton

12 June 2026 1:57pm

Hi Sandro,

Thanks for raising this and what could be a barrier to certain users.

The Sprout badge was originally introduced to recognize engagement and, more recently, to help protect the platform from large waves of spam and fake accounts that manage to get around our other protections. However, your comment highlights an important trade-off, and we appreciate you bringing it to our attention.

I have updated these guidelines to include an extra line clarifying that if someone runs into issues completing the required tasks to obtain the Sprout Badge for any reason, they can privately email me / the team and we can circumvent the badge and unlock all the abilities for anyone that needs them. I can see you have already obtained your Sprout Badge, but hopefully this will help others in future.

We are also working on potentially easing restrictions for non-verified users to be able to post a limited number of times per day instead of not at all, which would allow for valuable contributions from any community member without the need to jump through these hoops, but also retain a level of protection against mass spam posts from bots that manage to circumvent our other anti-spam/bot security at the point of registration. We also plan to make it easier for members to track what requirements for the badge they have completed and what they need to do next in order to minimise the time it takes to earn this badge.

We welcome any other suggestions to make things more accessible to more community members too!

Erik

5 July 2026 6:33pm

Ok

Erik

5 July 2026 6:34pm

The process begins 😂

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discusión

New "Human Dimensions" group on Wildlabs?

Matt Ziegler

29 Mayo 2026 7:25pm

Hello everybody!I would like to propose the creation of a Human Dimensions group on WILDLABS.This idea came out of the social sciences lunch at ICTC 2026 in Lima...

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Ruben D. Ramírez Ramírez

24 June 2026 7:37pm

Hi Matt,

I would definitely be interested in joining this group.

One thing I often find is that we spend a lot of time discussing technologies and ecological outcomes, but much less time discussing the social and institutional processes that ultimately shape whether those technologies succeed or fail.

I think a Human Dimensions group could be a great space to connect people working on governance, policy, stakeholder engagement, values, and other topics that are often spread across different communities.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops!

Jennifer Zhuge

25 June 2026 12:59am

yes, this group is definitely needed!

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discusión

London Climate Action Week 2026 Conservation Technology Related Events?

Elsa

15 Junio 2026 2:23pm

Hello, I am trying to put together a list of conservation technology (particularly Remote Sensing & GIS related) events happening during London Climate Action Week....

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Keenan Johnson

16 June 2026 11:20pm

Yes I've just moved to London actually and would love to attend as many events as I can. 

Elsa

21 June 2026 1:10pm

I'd reccomend EO Summit, although this is sort of a stand-alone conference: https://londonclimateactionweek.org/event/eo-summit-2026/ and these two look super interesting too:

If you end up going would be great to have a summary! :)

 

Akiba

22 June 2026 6:22am

I’ll be at LCAW but unfortunately can’t make this event. Posting it here in case others might be interested. 

Lcaw

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artículo

The State of Conservation Technology: What Five Years of Data Tell Us 

Vanesa Reyes and 2 more

16 Junio 2026 7:08pm

Our 2026 report is here, drawing on five years of community-sourced data to explore how the field is evolving, where progress is being made, and where collective action is still needed.

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Jared Marley

17 June 2026 12:33am

Interesting study and good to see it evolve over time. From a hardware manufacturer's perpsective a few items jumped out at me:

Simultaneous Cost and Improvement Demand: I had a chuckle that all hardware products surveyed the top two user feedback was improvements to both Tech Quality and Financial Accessibility "we want it better and cheaper"! These are generally diametrically opposed and are balanced by OEM's for main use case design. Improvements to both are rare and difficult outside of global macro economic factors and underlying technology/manufacturing advancement.

Under-represented Government and Industry Participation Relative to Buying Power. Survey respondents are heavily weighted to NGO/University (60% of respondents) whereas government and private made up 17.5% of respondents. However, the purchasing power is flipped. Many tech products are outbought by budget heavy government/industry by factors of 10-100x. The total domination of income streams for OEM's means their concerns determine development path.

Additionally, with government/industry underrepresented here we can see a divergence between NGO/University dominated feedback in reprots like these taken by early stage companies and then hitting the wall of the government/industry funding machine favouring the commercial offerings of mature businesses. The classic tech startup zombie corp that struggles to bridge the gap between seed funding and long-term sales supported viability.

Manufacturer Multi-Regional Expansion/Distribution: On developer constraints this was not an option on survey response. Regardless of industry, multi-regional expansion is the next biggest test point of a company after initial funding/profit. Very few companies succeed in this stage regardless of industry. Gatekeeping barriers such as increased transportation, tariffs, local distribution costs, and payment/transaction risk kneecap expansions of otherwise functional tech into other markets. Even in best case scenario these additional structural costs are passed onto the consumer, often with less support. 

Global South Accessibility: The report notes a wide bridge between the two. Unfortunately, for most hardware products the smaller, independent markets in the global south are the most expensive for non-local companies to access. We also often cannot easily reduce base price without reducing quality. I wonder about other non-price accessibility levers - such as regional multi-tech hubs with tool librairies, training etc. 

A big takeaway for the larger global north companies is that we should all be considering white labelling or core underlying tech development for adoption by optimized local businesses for the specific regional needs. For example focus on universal and expensive to develop core components like PCB's and leave local optimization such as power supply, housing to local importers/integrators.

 

Vanesa Reyes

17 June 2026 1:21pm

Thanks for these thoughtful reflections and for bringing a hardware manufacturer perspective to the discussion. These are all really interesting points.

I especially appreciated your observation that improving accessibility may require more than simply reducing costs. There may be significant opportunities in alternative models such as regional support hubs, training networks, shared infrastructure, and partnerships with local organizations. These are exactly the kinds of enabling conditions that our findings suggest deserve more attention alongside technological innovation.

We also appreciate any feedback as we're currently preparing the next edition of the survey. Input like this helps us think about how we can continue improving the questions and better capture perspectives from across the conservation technology ecosystem.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your insights.

Kim Hendrikse

25 June 2026 10:08am

Nice comments Jared!

In addition to wanting more quality but cheaper cost. People also want more compute capability and lower power. They want it all basically and for nothing. We all do right ?

Another thing related to cost. In 2023 when I first discovered wildlabs, I developed a sound localizing acoustic ARU that installed with one single command completely on a raspberry pi zero. It is highly accurate. It was free software and cheap to make. No one was interested. Back when there was a chip shortage and the audio moth was in short supply I read that people were craving an open source recorder. Apparently not so anymore in 2023.

At the time I would have loved it to work out with open source. But I realize now that if you actually want to be able to make a difference, then you are going to have to put an enormous effort into it and it's hard to make this viable with open source.

Aside from those glitches though, I've made some great connections with wildlabber's that are working out very well. Several.

Going the commercial route I am able to put quality into the products that would be really really hard to do with open source. I've invested a huge amount of personal money into the development of my products and I'm deeply grateful to those wildlabber's that I'm working with now as it's working out.

But commercial does pull in the other direction to open source. But be aware of false economies. If a system is open source then it could potentially cost a lot more than a commercial product if a lot work is needed to get where you want to go with open source in comparison with a commercial product.

Going commercial though is also very very challenging, even for seasoned software developers.

I guess the message I have is that as someone starting out as an individual I was a corner case. And if you want to make a difference then you need to change that, it doesn't matter what you have to offer, that's what I've learned. So either form a company, an NGO or make an alliance. I've both formed a company and made alliances. And in my case closed source was the only way I could make a viable company. Other people may be able to make a viable NGO with open source.

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discusión

What questions would you ask an AI agent for conservation tech?

Talia Speaker

8 July 2025 5:49pm

If you had access to an agent trained specifically to provide guidance on conservation technology tools + methods, what would you ask it? It sounds like a lot of folks are...

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Maggie Bliss

6 June 2026 11:31pm

Elionai - your point about lessons from past deployments and "what tends to fail first" really resonates. I think that gap between ideal-condition performance and what actually holds up in the field is one of the most underrated questions in this whole space.

I'm building something that integrates environmental monitoring, so I'd love to pick your brain on the edge/deployment side. Messaging you to connect!

Sandro Von Matter

7 June 2026 6:48pm

I would probably ask: “If your code basically does not allow you to take harmful actions, what should you do if you are provided with irrefutable proof that your existence, supported by components built and developed with “rare minerals” extracted from conflict areas is actually harming and destroying indigenous communities and biodiversity?”

Manikandan Sundaramoorthy

15 June 2026 10:08pm

Hello,
This is an incredible initiative, and exactly the kind of practical AI application that can make a huge impact in the conservation space!

As an AI Solutions Architect based in the US with 20 years of tech experience, I have built several RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and Agentic solutions. I would love to contribute directly to the implementation or consulting side of this project if required.

Whether you need help with structuring the retrieval pipelines for the forum data, designing the agentic workflows, or handling the backend and cloud deployment, I would be happy to jump in and support the build.

Please let me know how I can best get involved, or if you'd like to chat about the technical architecture and how to bring this to life!

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evento

London Climate Action Week 2026

Elsa

15 Junio 2026 2:27pm

LCAW is a key moment in the global climate calendar — where climate action happens between COPs, where the UN Global Climate Action Agenda comes alive in cities and communities, and where the international climate...

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discusión

Invitation to share your story

Sebastian Wallace

7 November 2025 5:35pm

Hi everyone,I’m working on a new podcast and video series called Earth Inhabited, which shares the real experiences of people building a more sustainable...

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discusión

How do nature tech teams think about their own product experience? (Looking for research conversations)

André Sequeira

27 Mayo 2026 5:18pm

Hi WILDLABS community. I introduced myself in the welcome thread recently, so I'll keep the context brief here.I'm André, a designer and founder of Mistaek, a small studio that...

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André Sequeira

1 June 2026 11:35pm

Noticed that, even though there have been some people filling up the form, they haven't submitted it. Can you guys tell me if there's something wrong with it or how you felt while filling it? What made you drop out?

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