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!
Movement Ecologist studying the where, why, and how animals move throughout our world. Current work is investigating the movement and energetics of large neotropical bats in a changing environment with ephemeral resources.
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- @TheDataEnthusiastic
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Hi, I'm pursuing Master's in Data Science. And I want work help protect nature and wildlife.
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I'm a computer engineer with a master's degree in Artificial Intelligence, I love nature and wildlife
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- @claudlacroix
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PhD fellow using deep learning to investigate marine fish acoustic signals and social behaviour.
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GreenLab
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Over 35 years of experience in biodiversity conservation worldwide, largely focused on forests, rewilding and conservation technology. I run my own business assisting nonprofits and agencies in the conservation community
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- @fsanger
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- @roxirisa
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Biologist I consider myself a data scientist with a passion for nature and with an extensive experience in species distribution modeling, handling large data sets from different sources such as gbif, eBird, xeno-canto, Worldclim, Terraclimate, ocean color e NASA among others. But
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Environmentalist and Python developer working in the realm of Remote Sensing. Fascinated by the intersection of technology and nature, with a focus on machine learning, ecological modeling, and biodiversity monitoring. 🌍
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Funding
Protecting elephants from conservation's most pressing issues like poaching and human-wildlife conflict requires big, bold, and innovative solutions. Hackster.io, Smart Parks, Edge Impulse, Microsoft, and several other...
11 August 2020
This exciting news article about The Global Wetland Project's FishID platform discusses the latest improvements and developments in using deep learning to identify individual fish species underwater. In addition to...
28 July 2020
Article
In this article from BearID Project, Director and Software Developer Ed Miller walks us through using their application to identify individual bears from photographs. Ed shows us how to easily use BearID remotely in the...
21 July 2020
Put your acoustic monitoring skills to the test in The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birdsong Identification Kaggle Competition. Participants will compete to identify as many bird vocalizations as possible in in...
8 July 2020
Conservation technology largely consists of two categories: tools to monitor and study wildlife and their habitats, and solutions to mitigate or prevent negative human impacts. The fight against poaching in particular...
4 June 2020
A couple months ago, we introduced you to the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT), a non-invasive way to build an identification algorithm from both wild and captive animals by photographing footprints. Today, we'...
3 June 2020
Funding
The 2020 Hackaday Prize competition has begun! This year, Conservation X Labs has partnered with the Hackaday Prizes as one of four nonprofits seeking tech-based solutions to urgent challenges. Conservation X Labs'...
26 May 2020
Article
We're excited to welcome the WildTrack FIT group to our community! Today, we'd like to introduce you to the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT) and share how you can incorporate this tracking method into your field...
6 May 2020
Funding
Want to compete in the iWildCam 2020 competition identifying species in camera trap images to support biodiversity monitoring efforts and automatic species classification model improvements? Because the Workshop on Fine...
4 May 2020
The 2020 Arm Research Summit is accepting submissions from all research disciplines focusing on the role of technology in solving global challenges. Submissions should reflect the potential of sustainable, secure, and...
24 April 2020
Article
At the 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference, we announced the WILDLABS Tech Hub, an accelerator programme created to support the development and scaling of groundbreaking technological solutions addressing the ...
13 April 2020
Article
At the 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference, we announced the WILDLABS Tech Hub, an accelerator program created to support the development and scaling of groundbreaking technological solutions addressing the ...
26 March 2020
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54 Products
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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@dmorris joined Variety Hour to give us 'a bunch of lightning talks inside a lightning talk'. Check out the recording to get a whirlwind... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Remote Sensing & GIS | 5 months 3 weeks ago | |
Also, take a look at TrapTagger. It has integration with WildMe. |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 5 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hello Sam,What would you say would be the estimate cost was for the first version Instant Detect 1.0 ? That might help my research ? |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Sensors | 6 months 2 weeks ago | |
We are writing a methodology to measure Biodiversity density in habitats.Examining lots of different options but very keen to hear from... |
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AI for Conservation | 6 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hi @GermanFore ,I work with the BearID Project on individual identification of brown bears from faces. More recently we worked on face detection across all bear species and ran... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools, Software and Mobile Apps | 7 months ago | |
Hey Wildlabbers! Is anyone planning to go to the Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) annual meeting next week in San Antonio? I'll be... |
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AI for Conservation, Community Base | 7 months 3 weeks ago | |
This is super cool! Me and @Hubertszcz and @briannajohns and several others are all working towards some big biodiversity monitoring projects for a large conservation project here... |
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AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 8 months 2 weeks ago | |
Hello! If you were interested in the DSAIL Tech4Wildlife Workshop last week exploring how AI can be used to aid conservation efforts, you... |
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AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education | 8 months 2 weeks ago | |
Very helpful, thank you. One more thing, are there any broad skills that apply to all areas of conservation tech that may be helpful to learn/improve, e.g data analysis? |
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AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Early Career | 9 months ago | |
Hi everyone! We were so delighted to have Adrien along to our June Variety Hour to share more about the Nocturnal Bird Migration project. If you missed it, you can catch up with... |
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AI for Conservation | 10 months 3 weeks ago | |
During Andrew's talk in our June Variety hour (see here), @dmorris put out a call in the chat that might be relevant to our marine and ai... |
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AI for Conservation, Marine Conservation | 10 months 3 weeks ago | |
During Andrew's talk, @dmorris put out a call in the chat that might be relevant to folks catching up on the video, so I'll drop it here too: Re: Andrew's fish work... part... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Drones, Marine Conservation | 10 months 3 weeks ago |
Enhancing automated analysis of marine soundscapes using eco-acoustic indices and machine learning
31 May 2022 6:33pm
UKAN+ Monitoring UK Biodiversity Symposium 15-16th June
31 May 2022 2:58pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Future Questions & Tools in Movement Ecology
24 May 2022 10:10pm
A comprehensive review on biodiversity information portals
9 May 2022 3:16pm
Executive Director - The Eric & Wendy Schmidt Center for Data Science & Environment, UC Berkeley
9 May 2022 10:13am
CV4Ecology Summer School
3 May 2022 6:13pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetups Season Four: Tracking Progress
29 April 2022 9:57am
News: The Latest in Conservation Tech (March 24)
24 March 2022 12:00am
Apply now: Women in Conservation Technology Programme, Kenya
8 March 2022 12:00am
BirdCLEF 2022 Kaggle Challenge
2 March 2022 12:00am
Introducing the WILDLABS On the Edge Fellows
10 February 2022 12:00am
WILDLABS Fellowships & Awards: Matchmaking between tech and conservation
28 January 2022 3:22pm
Deep Learning for Marine Ecology and Conservation
20 December 2021 12:00am
AI for Conservation Office Hours: are you interested?
8 October 2021 12:00pm
14 December 2021 2:47pm
We've now wrapped our first run of AI for Conservation Office Hours and you can read my review of how it went and lessons learned here.
Given the overall success of the programme, we're excited to announce that in early spring next year we will be coordinating a second round - so keep an eye out for further updates in the new year on the application and sign-up process.
Also, we'd love to know whether you'd be interested in having a 1:1 so comment below and tell us what conservation tech challenge you would like to cover or how a session could help you in your conservation work.
Many thanks,
Lucas
AI for Conservation Office Hours: 2021 Review
14 December 2021 12:00am
Low-cost underwater camera trapping and deep learning
30 November 2021 12:00am
The race to save California's rarest butterflies
29 November 2021 12:00am
Environmental Data Justice
26 November 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: The Promise and Pitfalls of Machine Learning for Conservation
23 November 2021 12:00am
Caiman: Images as Sources of Intelligence
18 November 2021 12:00am
Try our open-source automatic camera trap detection/labeling tool!
12 November 2021 8:39pm
Opportunity: GEO-Microsoft Planetary Computer Programme
4 November 2021 12:00am
EarthRanger Announces Inaugural Conservation Tech Award Recipients
3 November 2021 12:00am
Opportunity: PhD or Postdoctoral Research Fellowships - Chinstrap penguin biologging
1 November 2021 12:00am
Using IoT and Machine Learning to help protect Kenya's Rivers
21 October 2021 12:00am
Tech Tutors: How do I analyze large acoustic datasets using PAMGuard?
14 October 2021 3:42pm
How do I analyze large acoustic datasets using PAMGuard?
7 October 2021 12:00am
Call for Papers: Special Issue on Computer Vision Approach for Animal Tracking and Modeling
20 September 2021 12:00am
Tech Tutors: How do I use AI to fight wildlife crime?
1 September 2021 10:59pm
Which are major open challenges that AI can help to solve in nature conservation ?
28 April 2021 9:15am
4 August 2021 5:00pm
I would perhaps ask this in a new thread, so the rest of the community can see it! (as opposed to a reply here, where only the people in the conversation are notified of more replies).
13 August 2021 10:04pm
Elizabeth Bondi has work on detection from thermal imagery taken by drones! I'd look at her papers :)
27 August 2021 10:51am
Looks good, but what is the added value compared to other examples as Obsidentify and Plantnet?
25 October 2021 4:13pm
Hi Wildlabbers!
We're now going ahead with a small pilot of around ten 1:1 office hour sessions with Microsoft AI for Earth specialists. More details coming very soon.
For the time being sign-ups are now closed, but thank you to everyone who has been interested. We will keep you updated on how the 1:1s go and whether there will be further sessions to sign up for later in the year.
Cheers,
Lucas