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!
- @jdomingo
- | He/Him
I am an enthusiast for nature, technology development, biodiversity conservation and nature inspired design. I posses a technical and environmental background, and I am looking to explore the potential that advance technology has to empower the field of nature conservation.
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- @eccrc25
- | she/they
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- @och3k
- | she/her
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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
- | she/her
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.
![Commenter level 1](/sites/default/files/styles/square_thumbnail/public/2024-02/Commenter%201_0.png?itok=Qhj_yHVF)
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- @nlubcker
- | Dr
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
- | she/her
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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- @Alex.S
- | She/Her
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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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
Trapped inside during the COVID-19 quarantine and looking to engage with conservation science without leaving your desk? Citizen science projects like those on Zooniverse offer a great opportunity to impact scientific...
18 March 2020
Machine learning is rapidly expanding as a useful field research tool, but its complexity can intimidate even seasoned tech conservationists. Edge Impulse aims to make machine learning solutions accessible,...
16 March 2020
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi everybody 👋🏽,I'm a UX designer, and I design interfaces and improve user experiences/flows. I would love to contribute to conservation... |
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AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 year 3 months ago | |
Thanks Bas! I'll look into SSD vs RCNNs, I'd never heard of an SSD. |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 year 3 months ago | |
greetings! i sent you a PM regarding this, feel free to contact me however is most convenient for you - regards,chris |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Climate Change, East Africa Community, Wildlife Crime | 1 year 3 months ago | |
I'm looking for any recommendations for any entry level/internship remote roles/companies in the United States that are focused in... |
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AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Early Career, Remote Sensing & GIS | 1 year 3 months ago | |
Hi everyone! and thanks @StephODonnell for the invite :)I’m a software engineer working on MLOps, and currently studying for a part-time... |
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AI for Conservation, Open Source Solutions | 1 year 3 months ago | |
Indeed, I'll be there too! I like to meet new conservation friends with morning runs, so I will likely organize a couple of runs, maybe one right near the conference, and... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps, Remote Sensing & GIS | 1 year 4 months ago | |
Hi everyone! The Fine Grained Visual Categorization Workshop (FGVC) is hosting its 10th rendition at CVPR this June in Vancouver. A huge... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Marine Conservation | 1 year 4 months ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation, Ending Wildlife Trafficking Online, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 1 year 4 months ago | |
Yes please reach out with any questions on acoustic monitoring, Arbimon, RFCx, etc.! |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools | 1 year 4 months ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Early Career, Sensors | 1 year 5 months ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools, Marine Conservation | 1 year 5 months ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 year 5 months ago |
Passive Acoustic Monitoring: Listening Out for New Conservation Opportunities
![](/sites/default/files/ammie_kalan-.jpg)
29 June 2016 12:00am
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Accelerator Bootcamp
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24 June 2016 12:00am
Digitising powerlines in bird migratory pathways
14 June 2016 8:53pm
Computer Vision to Identify Individual Animals
29 May 2016 4:52am
TEAM Network and Wildlife Insights
![](/sites/default/files/eric-fegraus-2-.jpg)
28 April 2016 12:00am
Is Google’s Cloud Vision useful for identifying animals from camera-trap photos?
![](/sites/default/files/aditya_gangadharan-.jpg)
20 April 2016 12:00am
ContentMine: Mining Helpful Facts for Conservation
![](/sites/default/files/jenny_molloy-.jpg)
5 April 2016 12:00am
Disruptive Technology: Embracing the Transformative Impacts of Software on Society
10 March 2016 12:00am
Ecotech Grants from the Captain Planet Foundation
18 February 2016 12:00am
Upcoming GIS and Remote Sensing Courses
9 February 2016 12:00am
[ARCHIVED] Job: ML developer at Skytruth
3 February 2016 1:22pm
Report outlines 2016's most pressing conservation issues
![](/sites/default/files/olivia-bailey-profile-.jpg)
3 February 2016 12:00am
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge: Winners Announced!
22 January 2016 12:00am
Introductions
10 December 2015 8:13pm
10 December 2015 8:41pm
To start things off...
I'm David J Klein. My background is in deep learning, machine learning, neuroscience, neuromorphic computing, and signal processing. I've been doing the startup thing Silicon Valley for the last 11 years after being in academia for a while. I've worked on products ranging from speech recognition systems, to cloud-based deep learning platforms. These days, some use the blanket term "AI".
For the last several years I've been developing software for Conservation Metrics which gives their analysists the ability to use deep learning to process large volumes of audio and image data from remote sensors in order to monitor population density changes of endangered species, detect collisions of birds and bats with infrastructure, and find rare and elusive species.
More broadly, I'm interested in integrating many disparate sensing domains from eDNA, to land-based sensors, to GIS data in order to provide tools to conservation scientists and ecologists that will enable them to develop a higher resolution understanding of the health of ecosysems around the globe and their response to positive or negative human interventions.
I'm looking forward to interacting with you all. Please let me know what other questions you have for me, and other ways I can help.
Regards,
David
17 January 2016 9:08pm
Hi,
I am jason Holmberg from WildMe.org. I am one of the developers of Wildbook (wildbook.org), an open source data management platform for wildlife research. I'm using ML as part of the IBEIS.org project to boost and metascore multiple computer vision algorithms for individual humpback and sperm whales. David, I would love to speak offline if you have the time: [email protected].
Cheers,
Jason
Google Releases Tensor Flow
18 November 2015 12:10am
20 December 2015 7:05pm
"TensorFlow, you see, deals in a form of AI called deep learning. With deep learning, you teach systems to perform tasks such as recognizing images, identifying spoken words, and even understanding natural language by feeding data into vast neural networks. "
Would this be applicable to an acoustic monitoring network? For example. my research has shown tigers have unique, identifiable vocalizations down to the individual and sex. If this software is applied to my recording network for tigers, would it be able to automatically recognize and categorize these individuals?
For example: when it hears Tiger 108, it would know and then input that it heard Tiger 108 at a particular time and date.
11 January 2016 12:38pm
The catch will be (and for any neural network or AI type learning I would expect the same) the training phase. If you are able to tell the sounds apart or identify a specific sound as belonging to a certain individual, the AI should afterwards be able to automatically identify the critical factors needed to distinguish the voices of the individuals. But it will need enough input from each individual as well as the different vocalizations used by tigers. AFAIKT it will be able to do this automatically afterwards, but I am not sure if (a) you will get enough identifiable vocalisations and (b) with a wide enough range of typical tiger vocalisations for it to be really reliable. Training on zoo animals might work? I am also interested in this, but for jackals instead of tigers.
11 January 2016 2:30pm
I'd like to suggest our open source package Wildbook (http://www.wildbook.org) as a base data management platfor for this. I agree with the above that there are a number of challenges around the vocalizations themselves, but having the identity information in a good database and data model is a great foundation. That's what we're doing for our computer vision/deep learning project at www.IBEIS.org.
Our non-profit WildMe.org is running both. Feel free to contact us with questions. We have played with time series matching (often used for speech recognition)...but actually for whale flukes. Would be happy to discuss potential for audio ID.
Deep Learning Image Recognition of Species In Global Wildlife Crime Reporting
31 December 2015 7:28pm
Big Data and Conservation: Deluge or Drought?
22 December 2015 12:00am
Cheap Space, DIY Imaging and Big Data
21 December 2015 12:00am
The Impact of the Internet of Things
10 December 2015 12:00am
Harnessing Big Data to Combat Illegal Wildlife, Timber and Fisheries Trade
![](/sites/default/files/vanessa-dick-.jpg)
26 November 2015 12:00am
Technology for Traceability
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26 November 2015 12:00am
From Data Collection to Decisions
![](/sites/default/files/tim_wilkinson-.jpg)
6 November 2015 12:00am
The Social Lives of Conservation Technologies and Why They Matter
![](/sites/default/files/chris_sandbrook-.jpg)
2 November 2015 12:00am
6 June 2016 11:17am
Hi Jason,
Thanks for sharing this demo, it's interesting to see the fluke id process in action. Is this part of the flukebook project? How do you see the project progressing - are there opportunities for people to get involved or challenges it would be helpful to get outside input on?
Cheers,
Stephanie