With new technologies revolutionizing data collection, wildlife researchers are becoming increasingly able to collect data at much higher volumes than ever before. Now we are facing the challenges of putting this information to use, bringing the science of big data into the conservation arena. With the help of machine learning tools, this area holds immense potential for conservation practices. The applications range from online trafficking alerts to species-specific early warning systems to efficient movement and biodiversity monitoring and beyond.
However, the process of building effective machine learning tools depends upon large amounts of standardized training data, and conservationists currently lack an established system for standardization. How to best develop such a system and incentivize data sharing are questions at the forefront of this work. There are currently multiple AI-based conservation initiatives, including Wildlife Insights and WildBook, that are pioneering applications on this front.
This group is the perfect place to ask all your AI-related questions, no matter your skill level or previous familiarity! You'll find resources, meet other members with similar questions and experts who can answer them, and engage in exciting collaborative opportunities together.
Just getting started with AI in conservation? Check out our introduction tutorial, How Do I Train My First Machine Learning Model? with Daniel Situnayake, and our Virtual Meetup on Big Data. If you're coming from the more technical side of AI/ML, Sara Beery runs an AI for Conservation slack channel that might be of interest. Message her for an invite.
Header Image: Dr Claire Burke / @CBurkeSci
Explore the Basics: AI
Understanding the possibilities for incorporating new technology into your work can feel overwhelming. With so many tools available, so many resources to keep up with, and so many innovative projects happening around the world and in our community, it's easy to lose sight of how and why these new technologies matter, and how they can be practically applied to your projects.
Machine learning has huge potential in conservation tech, and its applications are growing every day! But the tradeoff of that potential is a big learning curve - or so it seems to those starting out with this powerful tool!
To help you explore the potential of AI (and prepare for some of our upcoming AI-themed events!), we've compiled simple, key resources, conversations, and videos to highlight the possibilities:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Everything I know about Machine Learning and Camera Traps, Dan Morris | Resource library, camera traps, machine learning
- Using Computer Vision to Protect Endangered Species, Kasim Rafiq | Machine learning, data analysis, big cats
- Resource: WildID | WildID
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- I made an open-source tool to help you sort camera trap images | Petar Gyurov, Camera Traps
- Batch / Automated Cloud Processing | Chris Nicolas, Acoustic Monitoring
- Looking for help with camera trapping for Jaguars: Software for species ID and database building | Carmina Gutierrez, AI for Conservation
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- How do I get started using machine learning for my camera traps? | Sara Beery, Tech Tutors
- How do I train my first machine learning model? | Daniel Situnayake, Tech Tutors
- Big Data in Conservation | Dave Thau, Dan Morris, Sarah Davidson, Virtual Meetups
Want to know more about AI, or have your specific machine learning questions answered by experts in the WILDLABS community? Make sure you join the conversation in our AI for Conservation group!
- @och3k
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CIBIO-InBio
I am a PhD student working on wolf bioacoustics. I am combining Audiomoths and Deep Learning into more efficient wolf monitoring protocols. My main field of interest is population ecology.
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- @nadyam
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Michigan State University
Conservation geneticist at Michigan State University. Co-founder of iCatch. Solving problems in monitoring, traceability, and enforcement through rapid species identification tech.
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Passionate advocate for nature and experienced communicator, looking to explore opportunities to leverage technology in wildlife and marine conservation
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Technologist and Visual storyteller focusing on social, conservations issues.
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- @nlubcker
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Results-Driven R&D Project Manager | Data scientist | I'm a versatile professional with 10 years of global experience in conservation and research.
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- @mariahmeek
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Michigan State University
Dr. Mariah Meek is the PI and co-founder of iCatch, an Associate Professor at Michigan State University, and the Director of Research at The Wilderness Society.
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- @aranFish
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CTO at SafetyNet Technologies
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- @Alex.S
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MSc Marine Biologist and Data Scientist, Co-Founder and CSO & CTO of Galene Pathways
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PhD candidate studying the ethics of tech in human-animal interactions.
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Chartered Geographer and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. 32 years in GIS, currently as a Senior Product Manager. Main interests: biogeography, biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, ecosystem services, rewilding.
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- @nabilla.nuril
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Incoming student of UCL MSc Ecology and Data Science
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In this Conservation Tech Showcase case study from Happywhale, you’ll learn about how AI tools are helping researchers and citizen scientists identify and protect humpback whales.
16 May 2023
The new role will support the growth of BioSciences’ new People and Nature Laboratory at UCL East through conducting cross-disciplinary research, teaching, outreach, and entrepreneurial activities in applied ecological...
16 May 2023
Are you using or creating tech to protect wildlife? We want to support your organization through two $15,000 grants!
15 May 2023
How can you use tools like photo quadrats, AI, and MERMAID together? We share an example overview of how WCS Staff in Mozambique use image classification tools with MERMAID to integrate photo quadrat and other coral...
12 May 2023
We've now wrapped our 2023 AI for Conservation Office Hours, where we helped conservationists connect with AI experts to get tailored expert advice on AI and ML problems in their projects
11 May 2023
Why you should know about Kenya-founded data analytics company - Gro Intelligence, arguably the largest funded tech startup within the African startup ecosystem and the only platform that brings together live, global...
5 May 2023
3 year position - Trondheim, Norway
2 May 2023
Article on www.nationalgeographic.com
27 April 2023
The Project Manager will work to implement acoustic monitoring projects in countries worldwide with some of the biggest stakeholders in conservation tech and biodiversity monitoring!
12 April 2023
New paper in Journal of Animal Ecology
24 March 2023
💙 Exciting news from Appsilon! Our flagship project, Mbaza AI, is expanding its impact on nature and biodiversity conservation. We’ve teamed up with the 🦏 Ol Pejeta Conservancy to build a model for classifying images of...
16 March 2023
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54 Products
Recently updated products
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi everyone! I’m sending some information for a paid user study about Explainable AI and bird identification that may be of interest:Our... |
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AI for Conservation, Citizen Science | 1 day 19 hours ago | |
Hi Johnathan, There is a Canadian company more or less doing that. They have their own endurance drone and optical/thermal cameras. Very much keyed into surveys and they may... |
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AI for Conservation | 2 days 22 hours ago | |
Aakash, that is a really amazing offer, we really need people capable of analyzing the radar data and used to working with signal processing I will reach out to you now. |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 3 days 3 hours ago | |
I am also commenting for future notifications - very interested to hear some responses.While not directly related to AI, here in Canada there's quite a conversation around data... |
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AI for Conservation | 1 week 3 days ago | |
Yes, this system is designed to be installed near farms. We also have the repeller system with audio & light, that is battery & solar powered. This system is a "last line... |
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AI for Conservation | 3 weeks 1 day ago | |
Undoubted things will quickly evolve from just "straight" ChatGPTn, BARD, ClaudeAI, etc "standard" models, to more specialized Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG) , where... |
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AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech | 4 weeks 1 day ago | |
This is so cool! I am 1000% going to see if they want to come talk about it at Variety Hou! |
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AI for Conservation, Citizen Science | 4 weeks 2 days ago | |
Hi Sol,If the maximum depth is 30m, it would be worth experimenting with HydroMoth in this application especially if the deployment time is short. As Matt says, the air-filed case... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Sustainable Fishing Challenges | 1 month ago | |
Online citizen science platforms like iNaturalist and Macaulay Library contain a wealth of images but are hard to search using text. We are... |
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AI for Conservation, Citizen Science | 1 month ago | |
We're seeking training data for AI for wolf ID - we at T4C manage 3 Wildbook platforms: Wild North, Whiskerbook and the... |
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AI for Conservation | 1 month ago | |
Hi Phani,An entry point might be to participate in a challenge related to conservation on:KaggleDrivenDataFruitPunchMax Planck Institute of Animal BehaviorYou could also reach out... |
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AI for Conservation | 1 month 1 week ago | |
[oops, the same reply got submitted twice and there doesn't seem to be a "delete" button] |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 month 1 week ago |
Tech Tutors: How do I start a Tech4Wildlife collaboration?
28 January 2021 12:55pm
30 January 2021 2:26am
Hi. Just watched the Youtube version (I'm in the unable to watch live hemisphere) and wanted to say that was a great talk. I wish it could have gone for another hour. I liked hearing about the issues and concerns from Melanie on the biology/ecology side. Also could totally relate to what Ed was talking about from the tech side about how it's difficult to have long term collaborations since there isn't really a conservation technology career path at the moment.
I think one of the things we're trying to do with courses like Build Your Own Datalogger is to get people involved in wildlife/conservation side more comfortable with the tech. The goal is to hopefully build a shared repository of technical knowledge that people in the wildlife community can contribute to and benefit from.
Akiba
Protecting Wildlife with Machine Learning
29 January 2021 12:00am
How do I launch machine learning projects using MLOps?
25 January 2021 12:00am
How do I start a Tech4Wildlife collaboration?
18 January 2021 12:00am
Edge Impulse Becomes the First AI Company to Join 1% for the Planet
15 January 2021 12:00am
X-Prize for Rainforests
26 November 2019 9:19am
23 June 2020 7:06pm
I think if you added it to your calendar through the registration button on the Rainforest XPrize site, it added the link to join to your calendar.
30 June 2020 5:45pm
Hi everyone!
I only just came across this thread and the Rainforest XPrize. I would love to be a part of the team if it's not too late. I filled out the Google Sheet form with my experience, but I also wanted to post a note in the form. I have experience managing conservation tech projects (with some members of this forum!), testing tech in the field, and conducting biodiversity surveys in the Amazon. I read through the Google Docs notes from previous meetings and you all have some interesting ideas. I would love the be a part of future planning meetings if you'll have me!
11 January 2021 7:06pm
I know I'm very late, but I only discovered this recently. Is your team still active/accepting new members?
Tech Tutors: How do I use pattern matching analysis to label acoustic data with RFCxArbimon?
17 December 2020 3:31pm
17 December 2020 9:22pm
Thanks everybody for joining today's session! I've attached the article here that describes Pattern Matching in greater detail to respond to some of the questions from today's session.
Also, here is a link to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service for the individual who had questions about GDPR. Feel free to contact us at [email protected] with any other questions about the platform or Pattern Matching in general!
23 December 2020 3:21am
Zephyr and Marconi, thanks for the great talk and your hard work that made this platform available to the public!! I'm experimenting with the pattern matching function to create some training data but have issues trying to get the "Jobs'' to run. I only have 18 files for each of these tests, but only 1 processed to 11.1% while two others stay at 0%. The internet connection was briefly interrupted when I created the first job and was fine later on. I can only Hide, not delete or re-run these jobs, so I'm not sure what to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!
23 December 2020 3:27pm
Hi @pmnguyen1224 , thanks for reaching out and checking out the system! We would love to help ensure that you're able to get pattern matching to work for you! I do have a few questions for you so we can replicate issue you are experiencing. Would you mind emailing us a couple screenshots and your original message above at [email protected] to get started? Or feel free to send us a chat if that's easier, by clicking on the chat icon on https://arbimon.rfcx.org/. Looking forward to supporting you moving forward!
British Antarctic Survey: Monitoring Whales From Space
21 December 2020 12:00am
Realtime video analysis using ML on Raspberry PI
25 September 2020 3:15pm
11 December 2020 12:19pm
Hi Andrew,
Yo need to train a lightweight DNN model for bird flocks which can then be deployed on Raspberry Pi. For initial starters, you can look into the below tutorial:
https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2017/10/16/raspberry-pi-deep-learning-object-detection-with-opencv/
Best
Piyush
How do I use pattern matching analysis to label acoustic data with RFCx Arbimon?
8 December 2020 12:00am
FIS Call for Expressions of Interest (closed)
8 December 2020 12:00am
Making the Most of Tech Tutors Season 2!
30 November 2020 12:00am
Kaggle Competition: Species Audio Detection
24 November 2020 12:00am
WILDLABS Tech Tutors: Season Two
24 November 2020 12:00am
WILDLABS: Building a Better World with ‘Bad’ Data
17 November 2020 12:00am
Weekly Event: OTN Virtual Study Hall
16 November 2020 12:00am
Google unveils search engine for open data
6 September 2018 4:26pm
10 September 2018 7:57am
I agree – this is a very welcome development, and it’s early days; I’m sure it will improve rapidly though. Whilst recognising that there are lots(!) of excellent data repositories out there already, with necessarily specialist functionality, there’s long been a need for something that can overarch these effectively, a ‘discovery portal of discovery portals’. Hopefully this can help do that.
After a cursory look, a couple of things struck me, from a user perspective: 1 –definitely some odd/limited search results at the moment, but as noted it’s early days – it’ll snowball as data owners get on board and standards adjust accordingly. 2 – more search tools would be beneficial e.g. date range tools, a map/bounding box search tool (cf Microsoft’s FetchClimate tool).
I also wanted to understand a bit more behind how it’s working – I assumed markup but wondered what ‘semantic web’ stuff this is drawing on. This article gives a bit more info, but I wonder how different it is to other efforts in this regard, e.g. how ARIES team have been developing semantic based tools to find best available datasets for ecosystem service modelling.
Final thought – it raises interesting questions and challenges about how to ensure things like quality and suitability are going to be measured objectively. It seems like this is an issue to be tackled as the tool develops and data owners engage more as it grows…
20 May 2020 10:24am
Hi all,
I'm fairly new to conservation technology and just getting acquainted with the extent and problems in the field. Data aggregation, standardisation and storage keep popping up as chronic problems across a lot of areas. Data seems to exist in sort of silos with different filing and access arrangements between them.
I would be interested to hear: Has the google dataset search improved drastically since its inception? Are there alternative solutions out there, or are there efforts to create them?
For example, from the bioacoustics meetup the other day, the vast datasets from the Australian Acoustic Observatory and Cornell Bioacoustics Centre don't seem to show up on google dataset search.
Andy the ARIES team you mentioned released a preview video of the interface with their ecosystem services modelling software. It seems really cool, is this something that would be useful for researchers outside of strict ecosystem services e.g. distributions of particular species temporally and spatially? What do you think of their software?
I'm not certain I'm asking the right questions here, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on any of this if you have any time.
15 November 2020 1:04am
This is great, thanks for sharing.
Using Computer Vision to Protect Endangered Species
10 November 2020 12:00am
Hackathon Opportunity: Vaquita Hacks
10 November 2020 12:00am
Upcoming AI for Conservation Events and Webinars
29 October 2020 10:57am
29 October 2020 11:02am
AI for Climate Forum: Lightning Talks
Bonnie Lei, Microsoft AI for Earth - 4pm GMT, October 30
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wO6ek5dTSMOmYqeMCDbkoQ
As part of the AI for Climate Forum 2020, we will host a series of Lighting Talks with industry leaders, academic representatives and researchers, NGO leaders, and policymakers; that will share ideas about the future of conservation and the harnessing of exponential technologies in the fight against climate change.
Next Guests:
October 30: Bonnie Lei, Head of Global Strategic Partnerships at AI for Earth/ Microsoft
November 6: Jenny Lawton, Startup Founder, and Innovation Expert
Tech Tutors: How do I train my first machine learning model?
18 June 2020 1:19pm
8 October 2020 9:45pm
Hi Wildlabbers,
Just popping in to share this very cool primer for beginners to embedded machine learning from our tutor Daniel Situnayake! If you're interested in learning more about the basics of TinyML, this is a great resource.
-Ellie
Training Opportunity: HarvardX TinyML Course
30 September 2020 12:00am
Webinar: Advances in Fisheries Electronic Monitoring
21 September 2020 12:00am
Tech Tutors: Review Session
3 September 2020 12:00am
Sustainable Fishing Challenges: Fishing Gear Innovations
19 August 2020 12:00am
Challenge: ElephantEdge
11 August 2020 12:00am
Event: StreamingScience's #Tech4Wildlife Thursdays
3 August 2020 12:00am
Automated Fish Identification and Abundance Using Artificial Intelligence
28 July 2020 12:00am
BearID To Go
21 July 2020 12:00am
Competition: Cornell Birdcall Identification
8 July 2020 12:00am
28 January 2021 6:22pm
One barrier that was discussed in the presentation was the "risk" or uncertainty of a payoff when talking to potential funders. It seems to me that the "risk" factor of collaborations like this, for funders, would be analogous to the investment and payoff when developing a genomics program. Relative to traditional field research, it takes a much greater investment in time, with different expertise, to create a reference genome for a species of interest and then pull SNPs, etc. Nevertheless, funders seem to recognize the potential for genomic research and genomic tools. Do you think that greater openness to “risk” in conservation genomics results from closer intellectual proximity (i.e., molecular biology vs organismal biology), or to conservation genomics being a more mature field (i.e., more examples of success), or to other factors? If intellectual proximity is a key factor, then conservation tech collaborations will continue to face this barrier, but if lack of successful examples are a key factor, then perhaps this barrier will become less of an issue for conservation tech in the future. Thoughts?