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!
- @matt_hron
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Wildlife Protection Solutions (WPS)
Product Manager at Wildlife Protection Solutions
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- @DominiqueP
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TRAFFIC
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University of Adelaide
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- @pbull
- | he/him
DrivenData
Engineer and AI for Good leader working on bringing machine learning tools to social impact organizations.
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- @ronanwallace
- | He/Him
Research scientist developing conservation technology in environmental monitoring and cultural preservation.
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- @PierreBonnet
- | Pierre
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2828-4389
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Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary
Technology Manager at Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary
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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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Founder & Director of Tech 4 Conservation
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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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 2 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 2 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 2 months ago | |
Bluesky have a commercial tree crown dataset available covering most of Great Britain (England, Wales and parts of Scotland). There is a canopy layer with approximate outlines of... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones | 1 year 3 months ago | |
Rainforest Connection's (RFCx) Guardian devices may be of interest. They are solar-powered and have connectivity options for Wifi, GSM and satellite transfer. They've previously... |
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My original background is in ecology and conservation, and am now in the elected leadership of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware which convenes researchers developing open... |
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AI for Conservation, Biologging, Camera Traps, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Drones, Emerging Tech, Sensors | 1 year 4 months ago | |
Hi Sophie, Can you please help me or get in touch in developing a system where we are able to detect an Elephant? Would like to discuss more about it. Kindly treat this as urgent!! |
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AI for Conservation | 1 year 4 months ago | |
Hello All - @sarabeery et Al have just put a pre-print out on their educational insights into teaching Computer Vision to ecologists. I... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Emerging Tech, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Remote Sensing & GIS, Sensors | 1 year 5 months ago | |
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AI for Conservation | 1 year 5 months ago |
Is anyone or platform supporting ML for camera trap video processing (id-ing jaguar)?
27 November 2023 10:49am
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.
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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 ?
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DeepFaune: a software for AI-based identification of mammals in camera-trap pictures and videos
14 July 2023 3:14pm
24 October 2023 8:46pm
Hello to all, new to this group. This is very exciting technology. can it work for ID of individual animals? we are interested in Ai for identifying individual jaguars (spots) and andean Bears (face characteristics). Any recommendation? contact? thanks!
German
25 October 2023 8:57am
That's a very interesting question and use case (I'm not from deepfaune). I'm playing with this at the moment and intend to integrate it into my other security software that can capture and send video alerts. I should have this working within a few weeks I think.
The structure of that software is that it is two stage, the first stage identifies that there is an animal and it's bounding box and then there's a classification stage. I intend to merge the two stages so that it behaves like a yolo model so that the output is bounding boxes as well as what type of animal it is.
However, my security software can cascade models. So if you were able to train a single stage classifier that identifies your particular bears, then you could cascade all of these models in my software to generate an alert with a video saying which bear it was.
4 November 2023 4:51am
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 some tests with identifying Andean bears. You can find details in the paper I linked below. We plan to do more work with Andean bears in 2024.
I would love to connect with you. I'll send you a message with my email address.
Regards,
Ed
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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