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!
FruitPunch AI
CTO and Founder of FruitPunch AI
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- @stefan_istrate
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Machine Learning Researcher & Nature Photographer. Building conservation tech for biodiversity monitoring at Wildlife Insights.
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Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
Behavioural ecologist @CNRS in France - working mostly on ungulates in Europe and Africa
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- @ptynecki
- | Piotr
Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience in application design, development, testing and deployment. Highly experienced in Health Care, Life Science and BigData projects. Artificial Intelligence researcher (NLP, Computer Vision) with experience in Wildlife Conservation.
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San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Research Coordinator II for the Conservation Technology Lab at SDZWA
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San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Wildlife ecologist with a passtion for conseration technology.
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Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Science Researcher
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PhD Candidate at University College London. Research and develop wireless sensor networks for biodiversity monitoring. Currently working on a software package for AI bioacoustics classifiers on edge device.
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- @pchwalek
- | He/him/his
I'm a PhD candidate in the Responsive Environments Group, working on electronic systems for human and wildlife monitoring.
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Saint Louis Zoo
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The Smithsonian National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to help us integrate movement data & camera trap data with global conservation policy.
22 April 2024
Join the Seeed Vision Challenge, an opportunity for conservation innovators to harness the power of AI vision sensors for environmental monitoring and protection.
10 April 2024
Full-Stack Software Developer (Python/React) - Specializing in AI/ML for Wildlife Conservation
5 April 2024
Article
Article from Ars Technica about how difficult it is to detect and avoid kangaroos...
3 April 2024
18 month postdoc research position, Netherlands, EU-funded
28 March 2024
Article
You’re invited to the WILDLABS Variety Hour, a monthly event that connects you to conservation tech's most exciting projects, research, and ideas. We can't wait to bring you a whole new season of speakers and...
22 March 2024
Join our multi-national team at the AI for Biodiversity Change Global Climate Center! We're hiring a Research Data Manager & Tech Coordinator at Ohio State. Support cutting-edge research on climate change &...
15 March 2024
Catch up on the conservation tech discussions and events that happened during World Wildlife Day 2024!
7 March 2024
EcoAssist introduces a free African species identification model for camera trap images, capable of recognising 30 species.
5 March 2024
Join us to help prevent biodiversity loss! Understory is hiring a postdoc to lead R&D Development on generalizing Computer Vision models for vegetation identification across space/time/phenotypes.
29 February 2024
Join the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) in pioneering environmental and ecological monitoring! 🌍💡 As part of ERIN’s Observatory for Climate, Environment, and Biodiversity (OCEB), you'll be at the...
26 February 2024
SNTech are recruiting for 3 roles to assist us to develop computer vision pipelines for underwater monitoring
15 February 2024
August 2024
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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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... |
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Data management and processing tools, AI for Conservation | 1 minute 23 seconds ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation, Open Source Solutions, Protected Area Management Tools, Drones, Remote Sensing & GIS | 1 day 14 hours ago | |
Hey @Sylvain_H Am leaning towards Maad Audiophiles or The Maad Eco Community |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 2 days 19 hours ago | |
@DibblexLesalon looks like a great question for your team at Expert Drones Africa :) |
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AI for Conservation | 4 days 14 hours ago | |
However, I think it's important to reflect further to determine exactly what needs to be done. |
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Climate Change, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Citizen Science | 1 week ago | |
Congrats on the publication! Great work! |
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AI for Conservation | 6 days 17 hours ago | |
The German start-up Dryad is also working on early fire detection using sensors and AI. |
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AI for Conservation | 6 days 20 hours ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation | 1 week 2 days ago | |
I found this interesting |
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AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech | 1 week 4 days ago | |
Really interesting, I will take a look |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech | 1 week 6 days ago | |
Great new!! |
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AI for Conservation | 1 week 6 days ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation | 2 weeks ago |
Multi-day workshop: Machine Learning Advances for Marine Acoustics & Imagery Data
4 October 2022 5:20pm
Audio Across Domains Workshop 2022
3 October 2022 7:54pm
11 October 2022 2:05pm
18 Sustainability Job Opportunities at Google
3 October 2022 7:09pm
New paper - Rookognise: Acoustic detection & identification of individual rooks in field recordings using multi-task neural networks
3 October 2022 2:35pm
Authors developed system to acoustically identify individual animals (under varying conditions) using combo of multi-scale information integration, multi-channel audio & multi-task learning. Tested on captive group of rooks.
New paper - FathomNet: A global image database for enabling artificial intelligence in the ocean
27 September 2022 9:44pm
Open-source image database that standardizes & aggregates expertly curated labeled underwater data, enabling AI in the ocean. Seeded with existing imagery of marine animals, underwater equipment, debris, etc. & allows for future contributions from distributed data sources.
Conservation Tech Directory - new update!
29 August 2022 2:38pm
23 September 2022 5:26pm
Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!
26 September 2022 10:07pm
Thanks so much!!
Mangrove soundscape
27 August 2022 4:57pm
29 August 2022 2:47pm
You might check out the devices listed in the Conservation Tech Directory - you can search for 'acoustic recorder' or 'ARU' or something like that.
The most common off-the-shelf models (other than Frontier Labs' BARLTs mentioned above😊) are Open Acoustic Devices Audiomoths & Hydromoths (which may be particularly useful for you since they come in completely watertight cases that can be stuck underwater for deployments), Wildlife Acoustics' SongMeter series, and Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Swift units.
30 August 2022 10:10pm
Camilo--
Are you interested only in airborne sounds or do you want to deploy hydrophones? That decision would inform a lot of other decisions about your purchase of equipment, as would having a clearer picture of your budget.
23 September 2022 5:39pm
Hi there Camilo,
What an interesting project! If you are looking for a lower cost, but effective tools for acoustic monitoring you might want to look into two options:
SoundTraps - are very commonly used and perform quite well:
SonarPoints - these are also a great instrument option:
Senior Conservation Technology Expert Position (Consultancy) with the Global Wildlife Program
22 September 2022 5:35pm
Catch Up with the Variety Hour: October 2022
22 September 2022 1:59pm
WIA After Hours: Episode #5 - AI for Wildlife Conservation and Imageomics with Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf
21 September 2022 6:53pm
Listen to Tanya Berger-Wolf's conversation about AI for Wildlife Conservation and imageomics with Lauren Burke on the Women In Analytics After Hours Podcast.
Amazon Sustainability call for proposals — Fall 2022
20 September 2022 11:37am
Google.org commitment on using AI to accelerate progress on global development goals
16 September 2022 6:31pm
Research Software Engineer, Climate & Sustainability, IBM
16 September 2022 2:18pm
CamTrap Ecology meets AI conference
14 September 2022 4:47pm
Join the BirdNET team!
9 September 2022 2:43pm
Postdoc: Interpretable ML for species-based image classification
1 September 2022 9:34pm
New paper - 'soundClass: An automatic sound classification tool for biodiversity monitoring using machine learning'
1 September 2022 8:53pm
Silva et al -
- R package to train convolutional neural networks & employ them to classify sounds
- sound event classification pipeline, from annotating recordings to automating
trained networks
- case studies with bat & whale echolocation calls, bird songs
Introducing G.AI.A: Artificial Intelligence and Planetary-Scale Environmental Management
31 August 2022 10:25pm
Mara Predators Hackathon
30 August 2022 1:28pm
Research Associate in Conservation Ecology at QUT
29 August 2022 2:54pm
Conservation Technology Research Internship
26 August 2022 4:58pm
Postdoc in the application of AI for wildlife conservation & management
26 August 2022 11:47am
Online Hackathon: Predators conservation in the Maasai Mara
22 August 2022 10:32am
Ceres Wild Rhino application
22 August 2022 1:29am
29 September 2022 4:05am
Lead Software Engineer for ARISE
19 August 2022 8:22am
Lead Software Engineer, Wildlife Insights
10 August 2022 11:06pm
Research Technician - Unoccupied Aircraft Systems Pilot and Geospatial Analyst
10 August 2022 10:40pm
Building a simple AI-powered, human-in-the-loop system to manage wildlife camera trap images & annotations
10 August 2022 8:12pm
Hi folks! I built out a human-in-the-loop annotation platform for Felidae Conservation Fund, a SF-Bay Area nonprofit last Fall using MegaDetector. I'm looking for feedback from this amazing community around areas of collaboration, especially data/software resources we can share!
3yr Postdoctoral Associate: Remote Sensing and Unoccupied Aircraft Systems
10 August 2022 5:29pm
3 October 2022 11:40pm