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Group

Data Management & Mobilisation / Feed

Conservation tech work doesn't stop after data is collected in the field. Equally as important to success is navigating data management and processing tools. For the many community members who deal with enormous datasets, this group will be an invaluable resource to trade advice, discuss workflows and tools, and share what works for you.
discussion

Getting behavioral data out of datasets that weren't built for it

Maggie Bliss

16 June 2026 3:49pm

Burning question:There's so much monitoring data already- camera trap archives, acoustic recordings, GPS tracks - but almost all of it was collected to answer presence/absence or...

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Peter Apps

10 July 2026 12:55pm

I have tens of thousands of camera trap bycatch African mammal videos that are available for analysis to anyone who can turn them into published papers, data that is actually useful for conservation, or publicity for wildlife and conservation.

They are already manually sorted into carnivores / herbivores and the carnivores are sorted and/or tagged to species. I do not have the resources to do anything further with them. 

 

 

Maggie Bliss

14 July 2026 1:18am

Peter, this is a generous offer - thank you. A dataset that's already sorted carnivore/herbivore with carnivores tagged to species is a real head start, and the fact that it's bycatch from another purpose is exactly the kind of "data built for one question, useful for another" material I've been thinking about.

A few questions to figure out fit: what capture mode are the videos - continuous clips, triggered bursts, fixed intervals? And roughly how long are the clips? I'm interested in whether there's enough temporal continuity to read behavior (time budgets, activity sequences), not just presence/absence. Also curious which species are best represented, and what any reuse would look like on your end in terms of credit and terms.

I'd genuinely like to explore turning some of this into something publishable and conservation-useful. Would you be open to a direct conversation off-thread?

Warmly,
Maggie

Maggie Bliss

14 July 2026 1:27am

Kim, this is great - thank you for sharing it. And to answer directly: yes, footage like this is genuinely useful for behavioral work, precisely because a continuous clip establishes a whole ecological scene rather than a single detection.

What's nice here is the range of behavior visible at once. The mother is engaged in what looks like foraging, while the juveniles are showing enrichment behaviors - exploratory, playful, curious, moving freely and not staying tethered to her. Posture and pose carry a lot of the signal too: tail position, body orientation, how attention is directed. That's the kind of thing you can only read when you have temporal continuity and enough frame to see the whole animal.

One question it raises - and this is exactly the interpretive challenge I find interesting - is whether the mother is actually foraging or "reading" the landscape through scent, which looks similar on camera but means something quite different behaviorally. Disambiguating those is where the real work is.

I'd love to hear more about your setup and how much footage like this you're generating. Continuous thermal at this quality, running for months, is a valuable stream.

Maggie

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discussion

TrailCam - Browser tool for preparing trail camera observations

Erik

8 July 2026 12:44am

Hi everyone,I am developing a tool called iNat BioPoster TrailCam:It can also be accessed from the iNat BioPoster website through the “TrailCam App” menu:https://...

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Erik

12 July 2026 6:08pm

I’m continuing to improve this project and would really appreciate feedback from anyone who can test it. Thank you to everyone who can help the workflow with this web app becomes much faster and more efficient.

iNat TrailCam Local — V25

  • Observation folders now include the time of the first screenshot, helping keep separate wildlife events organized.
  • JPG files include EXIF, XMP, and IPTC metadata so iNaturalist can attempt to prefill basic information during upload.
Jorge Ahumada

13 July 2026 11:13pm

This is super cool! Thanks for sharing!

Erik

13 July 2026 11:44pm

Good evening, Mr. Jorge.

The tool is currently under development; it makes submitting data to iNaturalist much faster, since you don't have to fill out all the fields.

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discussion

PantheraID: individual jaguar identification with computer vision, built from 14 years of camera trap data.

Hazel Borbón

9 July 2026 5:39pm

Hi everyone,I wanted to share a project I've been working on and get some advice from this community. I developed PantheraID, an individual jaguar identification...

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Jason Holmberg

11 July 2026 5:04pm

Would love to talk. We build the AI model MiewID (currently v4.1) and Wildbook, which has been deployed for jaguars on Whiskerbook.org. Happy to share ideas. Data cleaning and multispecies approaches to increase data volume and promote generalization are really the levers that have worked for us.

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discussion

Project Report: Upgrading Software for The Motus Wildlife Tracking System and NatureCounts 

Catherine Jardine

15 June 2026 11:52pm

We’re excited to report the completion of our Boring Fund Project: BEHIND THE SCENES: UPGRADING SOFTWARE PACKAGES IN SUPPORT OF THE MOTUS WILDLIFE TRACKING SYSTEM AND...

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Denis Lepage

18 June 2026 10:41pm

This initiative was such a great motivation to finally tackle some of our tech debt, so thanks indeed Arm and Wildlabs. The boring stuff is really what underpins the exciting one, and it's great to have partners and funders who understand and appreciate this.
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discussion

Safe and Sound project report: Is Camtrap DP a suitable standard for (bio)acoustic data?

Julia Wiel

18 March 2026 4:17pm

Dear WILDLABS community,We are pleased to share with you the publication of the Safe and Sound project report: Is Camtrap DP a suitable...

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Kristoffer Noriel Ordoñez

12 April 2026 6:19pm

Your report on extending Camtrap DP to bioacoustics resonated with something we are just beginning to explore in Mindoro Island, Philippines.

We have ongoing camera trap deployments in interior forest habitats and are beginning to examine the acoustic layer embedded in those recordings, particularly for nocturnal species such as the Mindoro Boobook. The discussion around terminology and how datasets are structured feels especially relevant, though I am still trying to understand how frameworks like Camtrap DP would apply in practice to this kind of data.

It is encouraging to see this direction being shaped at the community level. I will be following this closely as we continue to learn and figure out how our own datasets might eventually align.

Catherine Jardine

15 June 2026 11:54pm

Thanks for this!  I've shared this post with the WildTrax (https://wildtrax.ca/) team and CanAvian (https://canavian.ca/) to investigate. We're exploring data standards as part of a recent initiative so this will be very helpful! @jeffcullis 

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careers

Biodiversity Monitoring Scientist

Tom August

8 June 2026 5:22pm

This role would suit someone with a background in ecology or environmental science who enjoys combining fieldwork, data analysis, and applied research to support real-world environmental outcomes.

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discussion

Call for Collaboration: Share your voice at ICTC next week! 

Mandy Eyrich

11 February 2026 3:29am

Hello, fellow WILDLAB-ers! I'm Mandy, your current Human-Wildlife Coexistence Group Leader!  :)I am heading to the ICTC conference in Peru next week and while reviewing the...

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Mandy Eyrich

19 February 2026 3:35am

Hi Anna!

Is there anything that sparks your curiosity, which I can address for you? Take a look at the upcoming day 2 and day 3 sessions, and if you see anything that intrigues you, please let me know! I'll happily join the session that aligns, and share your thoughts! ☺️

Kind regards,

Mandy

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discussion

Nature Tech Unconference - Anyone attending?

Elsa

8 March 2025 12:11pm

Hi all, anyone planning to attend the Nature Tech Unconference on 28th March at the London School of Economics Campus in London, UK? (the event is free to attend but...

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Elsa

13 May 2026 12:05pm

Myself and the Fauna & Flora Conservation Technology team will be there (@Chelsea_Smith  and @ugyenpenjor ) and also the WILDLABS team @HRees ! See you!

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careers

Ecological Data Scientist

Lacey Hughey

21 April 2026 9:22pm

The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, with 21 museums and the National Zoo. This position is located in the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology...

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discussion

Developing a Field-companion app

Ivan Herrera Olivares

23 March 2026 10:02pm

Hi everyone,The past couple of weeks I've been working on a field-app built especially for ecologists. The main trigger was that as an engineer working in ecology, I've often...

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Chris Nicholas

25 March 2026 8:22pm

how is this fundamentally different than Kobo toolbox, SMART collect, Cybertracker, Earth Ranger mobile?

I also understand the new SERCA effort will redo/unify EarthRanger and SMART collect
 
 

Catherine Jardine

3 April 2026 5:13pm

I'd also add NatureCounts to the list of currently available tools, though it's primarily focused on bird surveys and point counts. 

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discussion

SCB Drones and Data Working Group (Society for Conservation Biology)

David Guerin

3 January 2026 5:30am

I’m pleased to share that the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) has officially approved the new Drones and Data Working Group (D&D WG) for provisional status: https://...

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Akiba

3 January 2026 9:40pm

Congratulations David. Looking forward to attending the inaugural meeting :)

Akiba

David Guerin

23 March 2026 12:37pm

Quick update – our next SCB Drones & Data Working Group coordination meeting is 24 March 2026.

Two identical sessions to accommodate time zones:
EARLY: 07:00 UK / 08:00 CET / 15:00 HKT / 16:00 Tokyo / 17:00 Brisbane / 18:00 Sydney / 20:00 New Zealand  
LATE: 17:00 UK / 18:00 CET / 12:00 US Eastern / 09:00 US Pacific  

If you’re interested in joining the Working Group or haven’t yet completed the Expression of Interest, you can still do so here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScKxh3-e2duORzdqvuD2UCqC-Cpp7booTdWu7zFSHYPV0HOfw/viewform

Please email any questions to me at [email protected]

Agenda:
• Confirming Working Group scope and positioning within SCB 
• Establishing governance and leadership roles 
• Defining priority outputs for the next phase 
• Progressing toward full SCB Working Group status 

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