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!
Sea Mammal Research Unit Univ' St Andrews
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FLOATERS: Using individually distinct vocalizations to estimate breeding and non-breeding population of a species. Apply for the fully funded PhD position now!
20 October 2023
Many people know of the Mozilla Foundation because of the FireFox browser and other open source software they produce together with countless volunteers. Perhaps less well known, the Mozilla Foundation also runs a...
4 October 2023
We're delighted to announce that Connected Conservation Foundation and Airbus Foundation have today launched round 2 of the ‘Satellites for Biodiversity Award’.
2 October 2023
Careers
Could you be our next team member to help empower conservation through data and technology?
28 September 2023
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Island Conservation's Innovation Team is dedicated to developing innovative, data-driven tools to increase the scale, scope, and pace of island restorations around the world. As the Conservation Innovation Manager, you...
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25 September 2023
The partnership will support the Global South with the development, planning and management of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the high seas.
22 September 2023
The new white paper from Rainforest Connection (RFCx) explores the power of ecoacoustics and AI to monitor biodiversity and track progress towards GBF targets using case studies from around the world.
20 September 2023
The program’s third cohort will provide $300,000 to artificial intelligence projects making a positive impact in ecosystems and human communities.
15 September 2023
Article
Five #tech4wildlife people, projects and updates that caught our attention this month. An AI supported bear early warning system, a project that's connecting indigenous communities with high speed internet, exploring...
12 September 2023
Can you create an ecological data collection application on Android for Gibbon and Biodiversity Research. Check out this opportunity with us!
24 August 2023
Please join us in celebrating this year’s top #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge Honorees as chosen by our panel of leading conservation organization judges, and enjoy the story contained within these entries about how our...
4 August 2023
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hypraptive and Brown Bear Research Network collaboration to develop a deep learning, brown bear face identification system: BearID Project. [Disclosure: I am a member of... |
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AI for Conservation | 6 years 11 months ago | |
It looks like they haven't updated for a couple of years do you know if it is still active or are they changing to a different system like tensor flow? |
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AI for Conservation | 6 years 11 months ago | |
Here' s a press release we put out today talking about how we're using a deep convolutional neural network to find and curate whale... |
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AI for Conservation | 7 years 2 months ago | |
For those interested: in the acoustics channel I have posted news on our sound event recognition sensor, using conv-net: https://... |
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AI for Conservation | 7 years 3 months ago | |
Ah! Thanks for posting this Tom. It's such a well designed, simple to understand video series, and the backing track is utterly delightful. Given the... |
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AI for Conservation | 7 years 4 months ago | |
Hello all, I'm looking at using a combination of machine learning and satellite imagery to identify and count individual animals,... |
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AI for Conservation | 7 years 10 months ago | |
We are working on the identification of the threats along the flyway of the Egyptian vulture, endangered vutlure species migrating from... |
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AI for Conservation | 8 years 2 months ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation | 8 years 2 months ago | |
Hi folks! The team at Skytruth (responsible for Global Ocean Watch) are looking for a machine learning developer. It might be of... |
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AI for Conservation | 8 years 6 months ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation | 8 years 6 months ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation | 8 years 7 months ago | |
Over the past year the open data GDELT Project (http://gdeltproject.org/), which monitors local news coverage worldwide in... |
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AI for Conservation | 8 years 7 months ago |
Using "motion extraction" for animal identification
16 January 2024 3:46pm
17 January 2024 5:16am
You are most welcome.
I can only highly recommend joining the online events! They are really inspiring.
- and it is great to "meet" and chat with fellow WildLabbers during the "after hours".
17 January 2024 4:22pm
Very nice video in the link you posted btw:
Here is another less artistic one:
Salesforce Accelerator: AI for Climate
16 January 2024 10:15am
Two year postdoc - Machine Learning & Bioacoustics
16 January 2024 7:49am
Wildlife Conservation for "Dummies"
9 January 2024 10:02pm
10 January 2024 11:24pm
Maybe this is obvious, but maybe it's so obvious that you could easily forget to include this in your list of recommendations: encourage them to hang out here on WILDLABS! I say that in all seriousness: if you get some great responses here and compile them into a list, it would be easy to forget the fact that you came to WILDLABS to get those responses.
I get questions like this frequently, and my recommended entry points are always (1) attend the WILDLABS Variety Hour series, (2) lurk on WILDLABS.net, and (3) if they express a specific interest in AI, lurk on the AI for Conservation Slack.
I usually also recommend that folks visit the Work on Climate Slack and - if they live in a major city - to attend one of the in-person Work on Climate events. You'll see relatively little conservation talk there, but conservation tech is just a small subset of sustainability tech, and for a new person in the field, if they're interested in environmental sustainability, even if they're a bit more interested in conservation than in other aspects of sustainability, the sheer number of opportunities in non-conservation-related climate tech may help them get their hands dirty more quickly than in conservation specifically, especially if they're looking to make a full-time career transition. But of course, I'd rather have everyone working on conservation!
13 January 2024 3:14am
Some good overview papers I'd recommend include:
- Besson, M., Alison, J., Bjerge, K., Gorochowski, T. E., Høye, T. T., Jucker, T., ... & Clements, C. F. (2022). Towards the fully automated monitoring of ecological communities. Ecology Letters, 25(12), 2753-2775.
- Speaker, T., O'Donnell, S., Wittemyer, G., Bruyere, B., Loucks, C., Dancer, A., ... & Solomon, J. (2022). A global community‐sourced assessment of the state of conservation technology. Conservation Biology, 36(3), e13871.
- WILDLABS-led research! Led by @TaliaSpeaker and @StephODonnell
- Lahoz-Monfort, J. J., & Magrath, M. J. (2021). A comprehensive overview of technologies for species and habitat monitoring and conservation. BioScience, 71(10), 1038-1062.
- Tuia, D., Kellenberger, B., Beery, S., Costelloe, B. R., Zuffi, S., Risse, B., ... & Berger-Wolf, T. (2022). Perspectives in machine learning for wildlife conservation. Nature communications, 13(1), 792.
- Stowell, D. (2022). Computational bioacoustics with deep learning: a review and roadmap. PeerJ, 10, e13152.
- I'm biased towards bioacoustics because that's what I focus on, but this regardless this is an excellent horizon scan of AI/ML for conservation and acoustics!
- Borowiec, M. L., Dikow, R. B., Frandsen, P. B., McKeeken, A., Valentini, G., & White, A. E. (2022). Deep learning as a tool for ecology and evolution. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13(8), 1640-1660.
I'd also encourage you to follow the #tech4wildlife hashtags on social media!
15 January 2024 4:27pm
I'm also here for this. This is my first comment... I've been lurking for a while.
I have 20 years of professional knowledge in design, with the bulk of that being software design. I also have a keen interest in wildlife. I've never really combined the two; and I'm starting to feel like that is a waste. I have a lot to contribute. The loss of biodiversity is terrifying me. So I’m making a plan that in 2024 I’m going to combine both.
However, if I’m honest with you – I struggle with where to start. There are such vast amounts of information out there I find myself jumping all over the place. A lot of it is highly scientific, which is great – but I do not have a science background.
As suggested by the post title.. a “Wildlife Conservation for Dummies” would be exactly what I am looking for. Because in this case I’m happy to admit I am a complete dummy.
Application of a deep learning image classifier for identification of Amazonian fishes
11 January 2024 8:24pm
HWC Tech Challenge update 2020
SDZWA Conservation Tech Summer Fellowship
9 January 2024 7:04pm
Presentation opportunity: Text analysis for conservation (NACCB 2024)
8 January 2024 4:05pm
Tranforming Conservation Together: Highlights from the 2023 EarthRanger User Conference
2 January 2024 10:11pm
10 January 2024 5:23am
14 January 2024 3:06am
15 January 2024 9:54pm
AI to operate Wildlife Passage Gates
11 December 2023 4:17pm
22 December 2023 2:02pm
In this case, I would use BLE proximity - enough and accurate range, low cost, long battery life, no false positives - KISS ;)
22 December 2023 2:25pm
Aaah, this article suggests that RFID can be used for much greater distances so looks like RFID still remains the best choice.
22 December 2023 4:20pm
BTW. I found out that the Jetson Orin NX 16GB module is drawing around 20W when running continuous inference, processing streams from 6x cameras at 6 fps.
I'll try and find out what you can do with a Pi 5 and a smaller model over Christmas.
Semi-automated prediction of behavioral states in wild understudied King vultures (Sarcoramphus papa)
20 December 2023 1:34pm
For the current e-obs newsletter, Chris Beirne and I have summarized our previous work on the annotation of King vultures in Costa Rica.
Hydromoth for coastal & offshore surveying
16 November 2023 7:36am
18 November 2023 1:47am
Hi Sol,
I think your concern is well placed. The pros typically tow an array of hydrophones, in its simpler configuration it looks like a long fat rubber hose containing maybe a dozen transducers feeding their electrical signals to a recording unit back on the ship. All this is done to reduce noise from the ship, from waves crashing, and flow noise. The multiple transducers can also be electronically tuned to be directional so that it can be "pointed" away from a noise source (like the ship).
In your position, I would just try the simplest thing that could work, then fix the problems as they arise. It could be you may need to be dead in the water while recording. To address surface noise (slapping waves, wind), you could mount the hydromoth low down on a spar buoy, which you tow into position.
Best of luck, it sounds like an interesting project (c:
19 December 2023 2:20pm
Hydromoths are great for the price but they do not have the most streamlined housing and audio quality won't be as good as something like a SoundTrap or really any recorder with a proper hydrophone and 16-bit +DAQ system.
If you can afford it, this is an excellent SoundTrap based towed autonomous system NOAA have been using. It might work towed behind an autonomous vehicle
Alternatively, if you can have something inside the vehicle, a simple tape recorder (e.g. Tascam DR40X) and hydrophone on cable will provide excellent sound quality. You could also use something like a Raspberry Pi with audio focussed ADC hat to record but that would require a bit more programming. Even consider a standard AudioMoth and plug a proper hydrophone into the audio jack - this would still have a 12-bit ADC but would provide better sound quality than a hydromoth (hydrophones are more omnidirectional and there's no air filled causing reflections and attenuation)
20 December 2023 6:57am
If you are considering an external microphone and a towed system, then you would also be in a position to consider a raspberry pi with an external microphone with sbts-aru. Another option:
13th International Conference on Climate Informatics
18 December 2023 12:20pm
Grant for AI for biodiversity workshops (Latin America-Germany cooperations)
16 December 2023 6:27am
19 December 2023 2:55pm
How polar bears and people are kept safe thanks to integrated video and radar system
15 December 2023 12:22pm
Milestones Systems and Polar Bear International present their test of bear-dar in Churchill in the this Youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiXAHYCA99M
Bear-dar: Updates from the Field
15 December 2023 11:58am
Polar Bear International chat about bear-dar and burr on fur in this video on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfL42Wqctkk
Update on SEE Shell App to identify illegal tortoiseshell products
14 December 2023 10:00pm
Come for the trees and geese, stay for the AI: using computer vision for urban forestry and wildlife monitoring
13 December 2023 5:58pm
Benchmarking behavior classification of bio-logger data
13 December 2023 5:44pm
Benjamin Hoffman is a Senior AI Research Scientist with Earth Species Project, and joined last Variety Hour to talk us through his work to explore using self supervision to detect behavioral patterns in raw sensor data. Learn more!
Project support officer - Conservation Tech
11 December 2023 10:24pm
Data Viz Inspo for the Holidays
11 December 2023 8:42pm
Is anyone or platform supporting ML for camera trap video processing (id-ing jaguar)?
27 November 2023 10:49am
7 December 2023 12:42pm
Hey there community! Im new here and looking after lots of answers too! ;-)
We are searching aswell for the most ideal App / AI technology to ID different cats, but also other mammals if possible
- Panthera onca
- Leopardus wiedii
- Leopardus pardalis
and if possible:
- Puma concolor
- Puma yagouaroundi
- Leopardus colocolo
- Tapirus terrestris
Every recommendation is very welcome, thanks!
Sam
7 December 2023 2:31pm
Is this from camera trap images? Videos? Wildlife Insights is great! It uses Megadetector as a first pass to filter out empty images (those without animals), which you can also just use on its own. If you want to do individual re-ID, you can use Wildme. And as I mentioned previously in the comments, Zamba Cloud can work with videos. Conservation AI is another player in the game as well.
11 December 2023 1:38pm
Also, take a look at TrapTagger. It has integration with WildMe.
Trailguard AI cameras used for reducing human-wildlife conflict in India
9 December 2023 10:56pm
Two-year postdoc in AI and remote sensing for citizen-science pollinator monitoring
4 December 2023 12:21pm
WILDLABS Awards 2024: Supporting accessible, affordable, and effective innovation for nature
1 December 2023 11:00am
AI Earth: Using AI to tackle Climate Change
27 November 2023 10:16am
AWMS Conference 2023
Instant Detect 2.0 and related cost
16 November 2023 12:50am
16 November 2023 10:55am
Hi Kaarthika, hi all,
ZSL's Instant Detect 2.0 is currently undergoing Beta testing with external partners and so is still pre-production. We therefore do not have final pricing for the system.
Saying this, we have got a manufacturing partner fully set-up who has already completed two full build rounds of the system, one in 2020 and another in 2023. This means we actually have a very good idea of the system's build costs and what these are likely to be when we can manufacture the system in volume.
While I cannot release this pricing yet, I am confident that we will have an unparalleled proposition.
In particular, the satellite airtime package we can supply to conservationists due to the generosity of the Iridium Satellite Company means that each system can send 3,600 (25-50KB) images a month from anywhere in the world for a single fixed fee. This equates to around a 97% discount to the normal commercial rates.
We are currently very busy fundraising so that we can make this final step to scale the system.
If we can secure this funding, we hope to go into volume production by mid-2024.
Best wishes,
Sam
16 November 2023 2:12pm
Thank You for your valuable update Sam
16 November 2023 2:30pm
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 ?
Catch up with The Variety Hour: November 2023
16 November 2023 12:59pm
Software Engineer at Rainforest Connection & Arbimon
14 November 2023 12:30am
17 January 2024 2:54am
Hi Dhanu,
Our group moved to Wildlife Insights a few years back (for a few reasons but mostly ease of data upload/annotation by multiple users) so I haven't tried EcoAssist. This being said, I will look into it as a pre-WildlifeInsights filter to analyze the tens of thousands of images that get recorded when camera traps start to fail, or get confused with sun spots (which can be common at one of our sites, a south-facing slope with sparse canopy cover).
Thanks for sharing!