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!
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Technical Specialist at FFI: loves data management, maps, remote sensing & GIS for conservation
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Octophin Digital
Jack of all Trades. I've been a zoo keeper, a conservation geneticist and a web developer who specialises in conservation projects and orgs.
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- @IsobelAshbey
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Running a Tech for Good initiative at Cambridge Consultants, looking for organisations who need help developing new technology for conservation
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- @cnaumu
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- @Rob_Appleby
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Wild Spy
Whilst I love everything about WILDLABS and the conservation tech community I am mostly here for the badges!!
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- @lhughey
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Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
I am an ecologist and program manager with experience leading collaborative research projects in international settings. I specialize in the application of animal tracking data to conserve migratory species on a changing planet.
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- @tobiaspetri
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Schäuffelhut Berger GmbH
data scientist/algorithmic dev - caught fire for movement ecology
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An Environmental sciences and Management graduate from SUA, passionate and eager to drive change to the Environment, making World a better place for present and future generations.
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- @Alino
- | Alain
I am a zoologist and I am interested in biodiversity and the conservation of insects and mammals
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The Captain Planet Foundation is offering EcoTech grants in the amount of $2,500 to engage children in inquiry-based project in STEM fields.
18 February 2016
New horizon scanning report published this month identifies 15 emerging threats and opportunities for global biodiversity.
3 February 2016
From artificial “sniffer” technologies to portable DNA sequencers, the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge received hundreds of innovative ideas to help stamp out wildlife crime. Now, the Challenge is proud to announce 16...
22 January 2016
Dr. Lucas Joppa, Scientist at Microsoft Research, considers the evolving impact of data in conservation and society. He examines the difference between ‘big data’ and ‘small data’, and explores how models such as the...
22 December 2015
John Amos, President of SkyTruth, explores how remote sensing is being used in conservation today and the importance of sky-truthing. He examines the role that citizen scientists can play in increasing transparency in...
21 December 2015
Gary Atkinson, Director of Emerging Technologies at ARM, explains why we should be interested in the Internet of Things. Could it be a game changer for conservation?
10 December 2015
The 2015 Fuller Symposium brought together thought leaders in science, policy, business, conservation and development to tackle emerging issues facing our planet. This framing piece was developed to support a Fuller...
26 November 2015
Article
Traceability (knowing where products come from and how they are made) is a foundational pre-cursor for many sustainability interventions. While many tools have been developed to offer high-level insight about the...
26 November 2015
The speed at which data travels from the point of collection to a format which is understandable and useful for decision makers can be of critical importance. In this case study, Tim Wilkinson discusses a powerful suite...
6 November 2015
New technologies offer a lot of potential for conservation, but are there potential risks to deploying these new technologies? In this first thought piece for the Ethics of Conservation Tech Group, Dr Chris Sandbrook...
2 November 2015
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hello @Frank_van_der_Most , Thank you for your reply. The idea of the MSc course would be to cover the use of conservation technology (camera traps, satellites, UAVs,... |
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Build Your Own Data Logger Community, AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Biologging, Camera Traps, Citizen Science, Climate Change, Acoustics, Community Base, Connectivity, Conservation Dogs, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Drones, Early Career, Earth Observation 101 Community, East Africa Community, eDNA & Genomics, Emerging Tech, Ending Wildlife Trafficking Online, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Footprint Identification Technique (FIT), Human-Wildlife Conflict, Marine Conservation, Open Source Solutions, Protected Area Management Tools, Remote Sensing & GIS, Sensors, Software and Mobile Apps, Sustainable Fishing Challenges, Wildlife Crime, Women in Conservation Tech Programme (WiCT) | 4 seconds ago | |
Hi @DaveGaynor regarding funding, have you reached out to any lodges? I know that snaring is rife in the Manyaleti ... maybe some of the lodges in the Sabi Sands would be... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 7 hours 29 minutes ago | |
Actually my Raspberry Pi application is a sound localizer not related to image recognition. My image recognition related project runs on Jetsons and higher.But I think recognizing... |
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AI for Conservation | 1 day 1 hour ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation | 3 days 20 hours ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation | 2 weeks 1 day ago | |
Undoubted things will quickly evolve from just "straight" ChatGPTn, BARD, ClaudeAI, etc "standard" models, to more specialized Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG) , where... |
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AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech | 3 weeks 2 days ago | |
This is so cool! I am 1000% going to see if they want to come talk about it at Variety Hou! |
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AI for Conservation, Citizen Science | 3 weeks 3 days ago | |
Hi Sol,If the maximum depth is 30m, it would be worth experimenting with HydroMoth in this application especially if the deployment time is short. As Matt says, the air-filed case... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Sustainable Fishing Challenges | 3 weeks 3 days ago | |
Online citizen science platforms like iNaturalist and Macaulay Library contain a wealth of images but are hard to search using text. We are... |
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AI for Conservation, Citizen Science | 3 weeks 5 days ago | |
We're seeking training data for AI for wolf ID - we at T4C manage 3 Wildbook platforms: Wild North, Whiskerbook and the... |
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AI for Conservation | 4 weeks ago | |
Hi Phani,An entry point might be to participate in a challenge related to conservation on:KaggleDrivenDataFruitPunchMax Planck Institute of Animal BehaviorYou could also reach out... |
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AI for Conservation | 1 month ago | |
[oops, the same reply got submitted twice and there doesn't seem to be a "delete" button] |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 month ago |
Celebrating World Oceans Day: Revitalizing the marine ecosystem with technology-driven engineered reefs to accelerate CO2 capture
9 June 2023 10:14am
As we celebrate World Oceans Day this month, we are reminded that addressing climate change will take more than any one organization. It will require companies, governments, NGOs and communities, all working together, with the aid of technology, to improve the efficiencies of our activities and operations and to reduce costs, waste and emissions. Such an example is IBM and The Reef Company recently joining forces signing a joint initiative agreement aimed at bolstering their ocean conservation endeavors.
Imageomics Institute Image Datapalooza, August 2023
2 June 2023 11:44pm
ISO Speakers for Emerging Technologies class.
31 May 2023 4:29pm
2 June 2023 2:08pm
Carly, that would be great! Thanks! I work with soundscapes and love the work of Rainforest Connection! I'll send you an email (@CUNY) to coordinate!
10 AI for the Planet Projects you should be excited about
25 May 2023 11:07am
Looking for AI volunteer positions
24 May 2023 5:41am
24 May 2023 3:45pm
Hi Donya! You might check out the Conservation Tech Directory to see what projects/organizations/tools best align with your interests and skills.
Director of Research
Mbaza AI recognized by UNESCO & new team member
17 May 2023 8:49pm
Happywhale: AI-Powered Whale Identification
16 May 2023 10:00am
Lecturer/Associate Professor of Ecology and Innovative Technologies
16 May 2023 9:25am
Deadline Approaching: Conservation Tech Award
15 May 2023 10:21pm
Photo Quadrats, AI, and MERMAID: A Case Study from Mozambique
12 May 2023 3:44pm
AI for Conservation Office Hours: 2023 Review
11 May 2023 10:00am
Crowdsourcing individual ID for pop dyn?
1 May 2023 5:36pm
5 May 2023 6:15pm
That sounds like a really neat project! Do fish get re-caught often enough that individual ID is useful? Is sample bias (more data from popular spots) an issue?
GRO is the story of what on Earth is going on
5 May 2023 1:50pm
Using computer vision to understand bee vision
5 May 2023 1:10am
Here's an innovative project from the Harvey Mudd College Bee Lab that could help us understand how bees view their environments, and thus better protect bee habitat. This project uses computer vision and drone imagery to replicate "bee vision" of flowers and how it differs from a human's view of the same habitat.
How can you tell if a photo is AI generated? Here are some tips.
29 April 2023 3:35pm
[Recordings Now Available!) EarthRanger User Conference
27 April 2023 5:52am
Looking to contribute
27 April 2023 2:41am
Artificial Intelligence and Conservation: Closing Session
26 April 2023 8:54pm
Artificial Intelligence and Conservation with Lily Xu
26 April 2023 8:41pm
WWF's recent Fuller Seminar Series on Artificial Intelligence and Conservation featured some familiar faces from the WILDLABS community, including our past Tech Tutor Lily Xu! Check out her presentation talking about AI-based causal reasoning and how it can be applied to conservation challenges.
AI Animal Identification Models
30 March 2023 5:01am
20 April 2023 12:53am
Thanks Dan, that is very helpful. No zebras here but I did see four deer wandering through the streets this morning. Quite wild at times here!
I am totally willing to try an image classifier if it reports multiple objects it identifies in a scene. I will give this a go.
I think 1 fps would be quite acceptable actually, and in some perspective actually advantageous in reducing how much data is getting logged.
I tried upgrading my existing object detector model to YOLOv8 following the links you sent, but I don't think it is possible to upgrade the model on the framework I'm using (ml5js) so I think I will have to try a different framework.
Thank you.
25 April 2023 2:08pm
Hi David
It appears that you have been looking for existing models, however, most existing models are trained on either COCO or some other very generic dataset. So, if you want to identify just animals, you may be better off training your own model. It seems no one in this thread mentioned yet that it is possible to do transfer learning on existing models, which keeps most of the "visual part" of the model as is, but just changes the classification part so it can identify other things. This way you can take an existing model trained on COCO and in a fraction of the time it takes to train a full model, just retrain that for your animals.
Also have a look at your requirements for the inferencing stage. Some models take long in training but are superfast in inference and others are slow in both cases but very accurate, etc. If you want semi-realtime inferencing, you are probably looking at single shot detectors (SSD), and not RCNNs.
26 April 2023 7:34pm
Thanks Bas! I'll look into SSD vs RCNNs, I'd never heard of an SSD.
Feathered forecast: Tech tools comb weather data for bird migrations
26 April 2023 2:50pm
Since its launch in 1999, the BirdCast project has used weather radar data to track and forecast bird migrations across the U.S. In recent years, technology such as cloud computing and machine learning have helped make the work of researchers in the project easier and more automated. The BirdCast project is now working on integrating radar data with human observations and bioacoustics to help identify the bird species traversing the skies.
Congo Basin activity?
30 March 2023 9:14pm
25 April 2023 5:08pm
greetings!
i sent you a PM regarding this, feel free to contact me however is most convenient for you -
regards,
chris
Looking for entry level remote role in GIS/environmental analysis in the United States
22 April 2023 12:05am
Catch up with The Variety Hour: April 2023
21 April 2023 10:42am
Call for survey participants (AI/ML practitioners)
19 April 2023 3:17pm
Camera traps, AI, and Ecology
14 April 2023 10:08am
7 June 2023 9:42am
1 August 2023 10:46am
1 September 2023 8:06am
Segment Anything
13 April 2023 9:16pm
Our lead engineer just shared this tool for segmenting images and we're excited to test it out on our fishy & underwater pix. Has anyone else used it?
Project Manager, Rainforest Connection (RFCx)
12 April 2023 1:09pm
31 May 2023 10:21pm
Definitely interested! I'm in the ecoacoustics/acoustic monitoring space, working at Rainforest Connection and Arbimon.