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AI for Conservation / Feed

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the field to analyse information collected by wildlife conservationists, from camera trap and satellite images to audio recordings. AI can learn how to identify which photos out of thousands contain rare species; or pinpoint an animal call out of hours of field recordings - hugely reducing the manual labour required to collect vital conservation data.

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Rhino horns in medicine 

Hi everyone,I'm new here :)I'm doing my thesis of biology bachelor about Rhino poaching. I wanted to ask here if yu have some articles about Lab data of the inefficiency of the...

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BearID Interview with AWS

Ed Miller of the BearID Project shared this great interview on Twitter and gave WILDLABS a shoutout! If you're new to the AI for Conservation community, you'll want to learn about the BearID Project, which began as a collaboration because of connections made through WILDLABS, and has gone on to set a great standard for machine learning projects in conservation.

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AI has critical role to play in helping tackle the climate crisis, new Turing white paper finds

Four key recommendations for how data science and AI can be better harnessed to tackle climate change:

1. Apply cutting-edge data science and AI to environmental decision-making.
2. Foster a community of AI specialists, environmental researchers and stakeholders across domains and sectors.
3. Build robust digital pipelines to allow researchers to share, store and analyse the vast amounts of data being collected about the environment.
4. Develop digital twins to model and understand the systems that will help us to decarbonise our society.

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Ol Pejeta Conservancy and Mbaza AI

💙 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...

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discussion

Computer Science student looking to work for wildlife

Hello everyone,I am a master student in Computer Science, with a specialization in AI and computer vision. I like to work with AI, computer vision, drones, sensors, autonomous...

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Great information! Thank you for sharing this. I actually have Masters in Zoology and have done some field work in Marine Conservation. Since then I have worked in Science education and eventually switched to Software Programming. My dream has always been to work in Conservation, however life happened and I had to give up on this pipe dream. I currently work as a Developer in a contractor role for the Federal Government. Would someone with my experience have an advantage in conservation Tech?

I think the real demand in conservation tech is for transdisciplianry individuals. If you look at all the stand-out people in this space they are people who occupy multiple domains that are traditionally isolated. These are people who talk fluently in computer science and ecology, for example. Not only this, they are also people who create and imagine in ways that intertwin ideas and concepts across these domains. Its these people, thinking in these ways, that lead to innovations that really move us forward. Some of these people started out where you are now, having crossed domains through their career and then seeing opportunities to bring these skills together in imaginative ways. 

I couldn't agree more with both of these comments tom! I'm reading hundreds (literally hundreds) of applications for open WILDLABS roles at the moment, and the ones that stand out are those where it's really clear they're following genuine curiosity across different disciplines. If you're in conservation, it's the evidence of interest in tech (courses, projects, things you're trying and learning yourself). For tech, it's getting into conservation - all the things you mentioned. 

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discussion

Underwater Fish Datasets from the Mediterranean

Hi Wildlabs,I am Sebastian the project manager for FishID. We are currently in the last stretch of DevOps for the FishID platform. I am hoping this awesome network can help me on...

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Not sure if audio data would be of any use to you, but if so FishSounds has some - I just tried their search function and there is a location tag for 'Mediterranean & Black Sea'. 

You might try reaching out to the folks at Name that Fish, Innovasea, or perhaps an entity on the Fisheries Tech list would have Mediterranean stuff? 

Hi,

If this is still relevant, you can try reaching out to the Belmaker lab, they do BRUV surveys in the eastern Mediterranean and have hours of video, some of it I believe is annotated. Particularly, Shahar might be helpful, he's the PhD student running point on the project.

We have made available our underwater videos on YouTube as a playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnhVZKKy8WkZKriCIV6r7upWhHNVrU_7L 

It's about 1.113 short video clips with annotation and each is linked to the corresponding www.iNaturalist.org observations. The iNaturalist.org observations are research quality and have been uploaded to GBIF.org. The observations have been made between 2014 and 2022 around the Ionian Islands (Greece).

If you would need the original videos please contact me.

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discussion

Elephant Recognition

Hi,Could you help me understand more about the elephant recognition software? I have an Urgent Project which we can carry out.

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Hi Simon, 

i've popped you an email too, but actually sharing some more information here about what you're after will mean you'll be able to get better help from our full community. 

What are you looking for in particular? It sounds like there is particular piece of software you've seen that could be useful in your work - do you know what it's called? What do you need to do - image recognition, call recognition? Alerts when calls happen or are you looking for something more detailed? The more you tell us about what you're trying to do the better we'll be able to help!

Steph 

Hi Steph, 

This should be a simple project. Recently I came across a website with a sample video I am not sure whether it was from the wild Labs website. Where a camera is seen spotting a raccoon and giving an alert saying raccoon detected. My expectations are on similar lines, the only difference here is to change the raccoon to an elephant or a tiger. Please advice.

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The Arbimon newsletter is back! 

Rainforest Connection (RFCx) is bringing back the Arbimon newsletter for 2023! We're excited to share new features and tools of the platform, what's coming up, and some insights into our projects on bioacoustic...

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Operation Pangolin launches to save world's most trafficked wild mammal

Researchers and conservationists are embarking on a bold initiative to save the world's most trafficked wild mammal — the pangolin

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This is an amazing project. I'm eager to learn the conservation solutions from the projects that can be transferred to other species. We need this in Kenya, our biodiversity is...
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AI, sensors enhance wildfire detection

A pilot program in Oregon’s Willamette Valley will test how well artificial intelligence-enabled sensors can identify and characterize wildfires, which will help with responder resource allocation and boost community resilience.

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Call for Data: A Global Database of Tree Crown Footprints from RGB Imagery

Hello! I am putting together a benchmark dataset for tree crown segmentation - do you have data and would you like to join our effort?Call for data: we're looking for...

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You should definitely talk with Ben Weinstein and co (the folks behind DeepForest), if you haven't already!

Bluesky have a commercial tree crown dataset available covering most of Great Britain (England, Wales and parts of Scotland). There is a canopy layer with approximate outlines of each canopy (the image on this page shows just circular crowns). It's created using aerial imagery.

 

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careers

Machine Learning Scientist

British Antarctic Survey
The British Antarctic Survey’s Artificial Intelligence Lab is looking to hire a machine learning engineer/researcher. 

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careers

Engineering Manager, Skylight

Allen Institute for AI
On the AST Skylight team, you will work with talented engineers, domain experts, and product managers to uncover illegal fishing by developing the tools that help countries around the globe combat this problem.

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New tutorial on Firetail 10 - annotation of acceleration data

Hi! I created a new tutorial video on how to annotate high density acceleration data using Firetail 10 (www.firetail.de). In particular, I cover

* how to automatically segment your data
* how to edit and modify annotations
* how to transfer models across individuals
* how to overlay external and video annotations

If you like to follow the tutorial, grab

* your movebank account
* this study: https://www.movebank.org/cms/webapp?gwt_fragment=page=studies,path=stud…
* the free edition of Firetail from firetail.de

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Commercially available connected audio sensors

Hi - can anyone advise if there is a commercially made passive audio recorder that can be powered by solar/battery and have 3g/4g connectivity - ideally with compression on the...

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Hi!

I am not aware of any such connected loggers/recorders but they would be nice. 

The AudioMoths have been revolutionary in providing audologging at a low cost but they take a lot of "data muling" (carrying SD cards in and out of the field sites) and swapping of batteries.

Cheers,

 

Hi Lars, thanks for the response. We are using lots of Song Meter Micro's atm and they have proved to be resilient. Just need something which doesn't involve going on site regularly - but get the data off. 

Rainforest Connection's (RFCx) Guardian devices may be of interest. They are solar-powered and have connectivity options for Wifi, GSM and satellite transfer. They've previously been used for detecting e.g., gunshots or chainsaws (using edge computing) and then sending positive detections/alerts to folks on the ground. RFCx also hosts Arbimon, a free, no-code software platform that facilitates analysis of audio data as well. Happy to chat more if you'd like to talk further about it! 

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