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!
I'm a software developer. I have open source projects in practical object detection and alerting that is well suited for poacher detection and a Raspberry Pi based sound localizing ARU project
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Holder of BSc in Applied Zoology. Ecologist at Ruaha National park
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- @katja
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AI/ML consultant for climate/environment solutions industry
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- @karinnacvijanovich
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- @jsulloa
- | He/Him
As a scientist and engineer, I am driven by the pursuit of creating smart tools to preserve biodiversity
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WILDLABS & Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
I'm the Bioacoustics Research Analyst at WILDLABS. I'm a marine biologist with particular interest in the acoustics behavior of cetaceans. I'm also a backend web developer, hoping to use technology to improve wildlife conservation efforts.
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- @HRees
- | Him/His
WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
WILDLABS - Programme Development Manager, keen interest in bats, hyaenas and tech!
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Fauna & Flora
Remote Sensing Scientist working at Fauna & Flora
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Sustainability Manager for CERES Tag LTD. An animal health company; animal monitoring, conservation, & anti-poaching/ rural crime. Wildlife, livestock, equine & companion. #CeresTrace #CeresWild #CeresRanch
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- @amklovrza
- | she / her
Hello! My name is Anabelle Marques Klovrza and I am a Ph.D. student at Dawson's lab. I am studying community assembly of island-like environments, and in trying to connect it with the vulnerability and fragility of the ecosystem.
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Brazilian biologist, PhD in Ecology and 10 yrs of experience in the Amazon with bat bioacoustics
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WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US
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Are you creative, love new challenges and have experience developing software? The Wildlife Insights team is hiring! Join a diverse team of ecologists, data scientists, engineers and machine learning experts to protect...
10 August 2022
The Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing (MaRRS) Lab at Duke University seeks a highly motivated UAS pilot and geospatial analyst to support the ongoing development of new and existing research and conservation programs,...
10 August 2022
The Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing (MaRRS) Lab at Duke University seeks a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to support the ongoing development of new and existing research and conservation programs, both...
10 August 2022
Press Release for International Tiger Day – July 29th, 2022: For the first time ever, wild tigers and their prey have been detected by AI-powered, cryptic cameras that transmit the images to the cell phones and...
5 August 2022
Article
A gentle introduction to the exciting field of embedded machine learning.
5 August 2022
Article
Ceres Tag sends just in time alerts and GPS location to have the power to track and trace.
22 July 2022
The Earth Species Project (ESP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to decoding animal communication and translating non-human language.
15 July 2022
This WhaleSeeker article discusses how reliable distribution data depends on accurate labelling from survey images, and how AI can improve this process.
13 July 2022
The Pl@ntNet team is looking for a data scientist with strong skills in python and pytorch development. Pl@ntNet is a citizen observatory of plant biodiversity & research platform at the crossroads of data science,...
7 July 2022
7 July 2022
August 2024
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61 Products
Recently updated products
15 Products
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi everyone! We are spreading the word about a free, open-source tool called Zamba that automatically detects and... |
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AI for Conservation | 2 years 9 months ago | |
Hi Wildlabbers, This week's Tech Tutor Jamie MacAulay is talking about how to use and analyze large acoustic data using... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Marine Conservation | 2 years 10 months ago | |
Hi Wildlabbers, We're getting ready for tomorrow's episode with Tech Tutor Lily Xu, who'll talk to us about how machine... |
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AI for Conservation, Protected Area Management Tools, Wildlife Crime | 2 years 11 months ago | |
Looks good, but what is the added value compared to other examples as Obsidentify and Plantnet? |
+13
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AI for Conservation | 2 years 11 months ago | |
https://www.dryad.netJob description"Dryad is an environmental IoT startup based in Berlin-Brandenburg. Our mission is to develop a large-... |
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AI for Conservation | 2 years 11 months ago | |
Deep Learning Engineer at Pachama - https://jobs.lever.co/pachama/81716dd9-8019-4916-add2-fcfaae426331 Embedded Software Engineer... |
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AI for Conservation | 2 years 11 months ago | |
Hi everyone, We're excited to welcome Nicole Flores to Tech Tutors to walk us through getting started with Wildlife Insights! ... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools | 3 years ago | |
Hi all, We're excited to welcome Siyu Yang to Tech Tutors to chat about getting started with Megadetector! For all you AI... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools | 3 years ago | |
You should join the Key Conservation app, which connects people and NGO's for specific needs, whether funding, time, or skills (programming included). Organizations can list... |
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AI for Conservation | 3 years 2 months ago | |
Thank you VERY much for that, Carly. I really appreciate it. I have only heard of the bear research project and was not aware of the others. This is very helpful. FYI: Most... |
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AI for Conservation | 3 years 4 months ago | |
The Atlas Coral Atlas combines high-resolution, seamless satellite imagery mosiacs, image processing techniques, machine learning, and... |
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AI for Conservation | 3 years 4 months ago | |
Sure thing, I'll email you directly. |
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AI for Conservation | 3 years 5 months ago |
efficient methods for labeling clusters of fish in images for segmentation purposes
16 July 2024 9:43pm
17 August 2024 12:34am
Agreed. I have recently begun using SegmentAnything as a replacement for Detectron and have been very pleased. However, for a fish school I don't know how well it would do out of the box with the many overlapping fish.
Global model for Livestock detection in airborne imagery - Data, Applications, and Needs
12 August 2024 8:19pm
12 August 2024 11:03pm
Hi @benweinstein,
An open-source detector would be great! from my point of view it would be ideal if it could be applied to Very High Resolution satellite imagery.
Maybe you are aware of this already but there seems to be a group at Missisipi State University who is putting together a platform for Aerial Wildlife Image Repository (AWIR) to promote research and storage of wildlife imagery and data (I haven't looked into it - it seems you'd need to sign up but looks potentially useful).
They have recently published a paper and their dataset is open source.
I would also suggest posting this discussion in the "Remote Sensing & GIS" and the "Drone" group.
Cheers,
Elsa
14 August 2024 7:10pm
Thanks, I grabbed those datasets already. I know about that website, put couldn't quite make sense of it. It says 'open repository', but then there is a login page with no way to request to join as far as I can tell.
scikit-maad community
8 August 2024 10:16am
11 August 2024 8:19pm
We're excited to announce that a new release is now available, scikit-maad v1.4.3! This update includes support for Python 3.11, along with bug fixes. Make sure to update to the latest version to take advantage of these enhancements.
12 August 2024 8:41am
Especially if you're using version of SciPy > 1.11.
14 August 2024 6:01am
Hey @Sylvain_H
Am leaning towards Maad Audiophiles or The Maad Eco Community
Cast your vote in the #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge Community Choice Awards!
12 August 2024 1:46pm
12 August 2024 9:15pm
13 August 2024 11:26am
How do drones help agriculture?
25 June 2024 8:26am
5 August 2024 6:23pm
In addition to what has been mentioned above, also drones help in the early detection of pests and diseases, allowing for timely intervention. They can also plant seeds, reducing labor costs and increasing efficiency.
9 August 2024 12:21pm
Hello,
also in Nature Conservation and Biomonitoring drones can help to reduce labor costs and increase efficiency 😉
My free manual 'Drones in Biomonitoring' - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8077113 can help to get (more) knowledge how to proceed easily and successfully 😉
📖 The manual was developed to help authorities, landscape conservation / maintenance or nature conservation associations etc. in nature conservation to manage their growing monitoring tasks more effectively and cost-efficiently.
🛸 The use of drones can contribute in many ways to increasing the effectiveness of monitoring, reducing costs and minimizing disturbance - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen-Doering.
Best regards!
Steffen
12 August 2024 10:56am
@DibblexLesalon looks like a great question for your team at Expert Drones Africa :)
Climate Change AI Innovation Grants 2024 (<$150k)
12 August 2024 12:48am
AI Based Animal Detection Demo App for iPhone
11 August 2024 9:49pm
In this post, I describe an animal recognition demonstration app I developed for the iPhone. The “MegaDetector-Demo” app uses the latest “MegaDetector” animal detector model from PyTorch-Wildlife to identify animals, people and vehicles in a live video feed from the iPhone camera. The demo app is available as an Xcode project for Apple developers on my GitHub site. I hope this basic app will encourage more practical uses of edge-based AI tech in trail cameras.
Enhancing Public/Private Safety and Health Through Toilet Mapping
22 July 2024 12:25pm
9 August 2024 4:30pm
Well stated I completely agree, how do you think this can be done to marginalized groups without the financial muscle?
9 August 2024 5:37pm
Mh! am not sure, but I believe that financial support is essential for this to succeed.
9 August 2024 5:43pm
However, I think it's important to reflect further to determine exactly what needs to be done.
New frontiers in AI for biodiversity research and conservation with multimodal language models
4 August 2024 6:09pm
9 August 2024 4:17pm
Congrats on the publication! Great work!
AI based forest fire early warning system?
6 August 2024 3:41am
6 August 2024 3:30pm
Just some additional resources that may be helpful for ya!
There are some additional start-ups I know of that are working on this, such as Robotics Cats, FireScout, Pano AI, OroraTech, etc. But those are usually image-based (either satellites or drones or static cameras) rather than gas sensors. NOAA is working on a project for this as well (and this). And ConservationX Labs just launched a grand challenge around wildlfire solutions which may be of interest.
9 August 2024 12:59pm
The German start-up Dryad is also working on early fire detection using sensors and AI.
Day 3 of the #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Recap and Rewind
7 August 2024 3:33pm
Spatiotemporal species distribution modeling
6 August 2024 12:39am
6 August 2024 4:09pm
Hey,
You're correct, traditionally species distribution models are spatial only, but here are a few ideas for how to incorporate time into your modelling:
- Categorise the time dimension (E.G. Month/Season/Year, wet season/dry season etc) and use it as an input variable.
- Incorporate phenological data (flowering time, migration period etc) into the input variables.
- Use time series data and use an appropriate model to take this into account such as LSTM.
A few things to bear in mind:
- We need the time of the X data to match that of the y data. This constrains the data that we can use. I'd recommend using Google Earth Engine to get the X data as you can query it for specific date ranges and they have a wide range of relevant datasets.
- Whichever variables you use as input also have to be used for prediction.
- Any categorised temporal variables you choose have to be applicable to all species being modelled.
I hope this helps!
-Will
Introducing Our Bioacoustics Horizon Scan
5 August 2024 7:11pm
6 August 2024 3:38pm
7 August 2024 12:52pm
ChatGPT for conservation
16 January 2023 10:04am
17 July 2024 3:23pm
Hi, I've been using ChatGPT for quick labeling of camera trap recordings. I just posted this as a separate discussion here:
31 July 2024 6:40pm
Interesting!!
5 August 2024 6:38pm
I found this interesting
Rapid Camera Trap labeling with ChatGPT
17 July 2024 3:19pm
20 July 2024 3:28pm
super interesting, thank you for sharing! definitely will watch!
31 July 2024 6:38pm
Very interesting!!
3 August 2024 7:46pm
Really interesting, I will take a look
Successfully integrated deepfaune into video alerting system
2 December 2023 11:15am
12 May 2024 2:59pm
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 of defence". The blowers alone requires 1000 watts :)
31 July 2024 6:50pm
great accomplishment!!
3 August 2024 8:36am
Great new!!
Beginner Bird Classification Project Question
1 August 2024 11:56pm
3 August 2024 1:02am
Hi Carly, thanks for the advice! I hope to use this project only with the two birds using part of the labeled data from iNaturalist, saving the rest to run in the model. I will take a look at Dan's page as well, thank you so much!
3 August 2024 1:05am
Thank you so much Dan! Honestly, "I just want to learn about training image classifiers and I like birds" is a solid characterization of what I'm doing, or at least my initial spark. Although I plan to focus on the two birds for now, I will keep in mind your tips for adding other birds as I try to improve and advance my project.
3 August 2024 1:08am
Hi Carly, thank you for the advice! I am only focusing on the two birds for now - my goal is to use part of the iNaturalist data I have pulled to train the model and the rest to improve it. I will check out Dan's page as well, thanks so much!
AI and Ecology Research Infosession
1 August 2024 3:58pm
AI accelerator for nonprofits working in the Climate area
31 July 2024 3:01pm
31 July 2024 6:24pm
Great acomplishment!!!
1 August 2024 1:39pm
Thank you so much! Now everything is in the hands of amazing organizations and companies! But the first results of the Disaster Management cohort are bringing a very optimistic vision! :) I hope for the same in the Climate cohort!
Indigenous communities and AI for Conservation
8 May 2024 12:32pm
9 May 2024 10:26am
Yes, exactly! Alec and I are working together on this.
24 May 2024 3:53pm
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 sovereignty for Indigenous communities, such as OCAP (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession) which may be able to connect you with some of the big players in this part of the world. There is also a few efforts to incorporate more Indigenous knowledge systems in statistical modelling which may be of interest: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.07.556613v1.full.pdf
31 July 2024 6:49pm
great!
Firetail 12.2 released
12 June 2024 7:01pm
25 June 2024 6:00pm
New short tutorial available
31 July 2024 6:47pm
interesting!!!
Tutorial: model quality estimation with Firetail 12
9 July 2024 8:43am
31 July 2024 6:44pm
so great!!!
Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic Radar
7 January 2024 6:50am
14 July 2024 9:54am
Hi Heinrich, you are absolutely right about the need for long-endurance drone for such a mission on 250km^2.
Taking a full frame 35mm camera with a 35mm (wide angle) lens you would have a field of view of 123 metres x 83 metres (looking straight down, you want to be looking at an angle and doing this in high contrast lighting, preferably with the sun behind the camera).
If the area was a square 15.8km x15.8km you would need to do 16 km / 123m = 128 transects to cover the area which is 16km x 128 = 2,057km which if flying at 135 km (safe speed for game counting in a high wing Cessna 182) is 15.23 hours of flying.
Endurance and speed in commercially available drones - is what is stopping drones from realising their conservation potential.
Attached is initial (conservative) design performance details.
Contact me on +27 72 472 5318 and we can discuss this further.
31 July 2024 4:30pm
there is this one too:
31 July 2024 6:22pm
Great!!!
Bringing BearID to Ecuador
22 July 2024 3:41am
28 July 2024 10:17pm
@bluevalhalla thanks for sharing the awesome video, sounds like a great project!
Looking for interview participants for research on AI Conservation & the CBD
23 July 2024 1:45pm
Move BON Development: Follow up discussion
19 June 2024 12:02pm
11 July 2024 10:14pm
You can catch up on the recording at that same link to the June Variety Hour! Lacey's fabulous talk starts around the 9:40 mark :)
12 July 2024 5:38am
Hi Talia!
I feel like the topic is so broad that it might help to put some constraints around things, see what works, and then broaden those out. I have a lot of ideas regarding the data monitoring and collection side based on the other sensor and observation networks we've set up in the past.
There may also be some potential scope to incorporate things like data collection and integrated monitoring to the Build Your Own Datalogger series where the system is updated to feed data into the observation network.
It'd probably take a bit of discussion and coordination. Let me know if interested. I'm fine to jump on a call or discuss via email too.
22 July 2024 9:24pm
@cmwainaina please take a look
Rapid Camera Trap labeling with ChatGPT
17 July 2024 3:02pm
Hi all, I've published a blog post on rapidly labeling camera trap data using ChatGPT for species identification and a simple object detection model to get the bounding boxes. While presented in Edge Impulse, this approach can be replicated outside the platform using Python scripts for example. I’d love for you to give it a read and share your thoughts on its potential usefulness in real-world applications.
5 August 2024 9:58am
hi, if your intention is to use programming and a programming language like Python then one option which can give good results is the SAM (Segment Anything) or SAM-2 algorithm. The following weblinks include more information: