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!
Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Science Researcher
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Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
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BearID Project
Conservation biologist using camera traps to develop automated methods of photoID
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- @NicoLaur
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PhD Student in Disease Ecology, Taxonomy and biomonitoring in Central Africa
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- @ttopa
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Recent Environmental Science and Data Science graduate looking to learn more about the conservation tech world. www.TeodoroTopa.com
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- @HRees
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WILDLABS - Programme Development Manager, keen interest in bats, hyaenas and tech!
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Ocean Science Analytics
Marine mammal ecologist and online technical trainer
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DrivenData
Lead Data Scientist and developer of zamba, a tool for automatic species classification from camera traps
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Founder & Director of Tech 4 Conservation
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The program’s third cohort will provide $300,000 to artificial intelligence projects making a positive impact in ecosystems and human communities.
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2 August 2023
Exciting opportunity for an experienced biodiversity monitoring expert in ZSL's conservation department
18 July 2023
Apply for funding (£500,000-£750,000) to develop software systems, which will help to improve biodiversity monitoring by automating the analysis of images and videos
12 July 2023
We are seeking applications from promising early-career scientists and data scientists with interesting, innovative, and viable research ideas for the Future Leader Fellowship
12 July 2023
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At Appsilon, we are always working to enable our users to get the most out of our solutions. With this in mind, we are happy to introduce two new add-ons to Mbaza AI.
4 July 2023
Apply to work with an absolutely all-star group developing AI/ML techniques and models for acoustic monitoring!
28 June 2023
The GSMA ClimateTech programme
21 June 2023
May 2024
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October 2024
December 2023
event
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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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 | 1 day 2 hours 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 | 6 days 9 hours ago | |
You can also do these things or feed it your own sources that it must not hallucinate from (and keeps confidential) if you have the paid-for version. |
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AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech | 6 days 12 hours ago | |
SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR WILL ALSO DETECT AND LOCATE CHAINSAWS, MOTORBIKES, BICYLCLES, FIREARMS, MACHETES in fact anything metal. I have been concentrating on trying to get... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 6 days 14 hours ago | |
I'm not an expert in this field, but have been doing some self study for a local project... Resolving animals in an image is not purely height related - but rather a combination... |
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AI for Conservation | 6 days 20 hours 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 | 6 days 23 hours ago | |
Hi @zhongqimiao ,Might you have faced such an issue while using mega detectorThe conflict is caused by:pytorchwildlife 1.0.2.13 depends on torch==1.10.1pytorchwildlife 1.0.2.12... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Open Source Solutions | 6 days 22 hours ago | |
Hey Sol, No problem at all. Depending on your configuration, the Audiomoth software would have to work on a PCB with an ESP32 chip which is the unit on the audiomoth/... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Sustainable Fishing Challenges | 1 week 2 days ago | |
Hi, this is pretty interesting to me. I plan to fly a drone over wild areas and look for invasive species incursions. So feral hogs are especially bad, but in the Everglades there... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 week 2 days ago | |
Gotcha, well I look forward to seeing future iterations and following along with your progress!! |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 1 week 4 days ago | |
Hi everyone!@LashaO and @holmbergius from the Wild Me team at ConservationX Labs gave a superb talk at last month's Variety Hour,... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 week 6 days ago | |
Thanks Carly! I will keep anyone interested in this project posted on this platform. Cheers |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation | 1 week 6 days ago |
Insight; a secure online platform designed for sharing experiences of conservation tool use.
7 November 2023 1:01pm
A secure platform designed for those working to monitor & protect natural resources. Insight facilitates sharing experience, knowledge & tools to increase efficiency & effectiveness in conservation. By sharing we reduce time & money spent to find, test, & implement solutions.
DeepFaune: a software for AI-based identification of mammals in camera-trap pictures and videos
14 July 2023 3:14pm
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
A SPOTLIGHT ON CUTTING-EDGE BIOMONITORING TECHNOLOGIES
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31 January 2024 7:17pm
Nepal's tiger conservation gets tech boost with AI-powered deer tracking
30 October 2023 1:23pm
Researchers in Nepal are using vertical cameras and AI technology to track and profile individual spotted deer (Axis axis), similar to the methods used for tigers.
Acoustic Monitoring Specialist
26 October 2023 7:32pm
AI + Environment Summit
26 October 2023 11:15am
Entomological Research Specialist for Automated Insect Monitoring
25 October 2023 7:21pm
Lead Data Engineer - Climate Solutions, Open Earth
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Automated moth monitoring & you!
24 October 2023 8:52am
Biodiversity modelling in the AI era
23 October 2023 12:03pm
Soundscapes and deep learning enable tracking biodiversity recovery in tropical forests
20 October 2023 3:38pm
New paper in Nature Communications from Jörg Müller et al. using BAR-LT recorders and CNNs to track biodiversity recovery. Study shows that #soundscapes 🎙🎶 and deep learning are powerful tools for tracking biodiversity recovery in tropical forests
ZSL Research Fellow (x3 roles)
20 October 2023 3:34pm
PhD Opportunity: YELLOWHAMMER - Individual acoustic monitoring to study song culture evolutionwithin and between dialect areas
20 October 2023 12:54pm
PhD Opportunity: Distributed sound source localisation and separation for wireless microphone networks consisting of two-microphone nodes
20 October 2023 12:47pm
PhD Opportunity: 'FLOATERS' position at Bioacoustic AI Doctoral Network
20 October 2023 12:36pm
Catch up with The Variety Hour: October 2023
19 October 2023 11:59am
Anyone else attending ADSA in Texas next week?
17 October 2023 8:46pm
Practical strategies for conservationists in an increasingly digital world
9 October 2023 5:04pm
Leveraging new digital technologies for conservation impact
9 October 2023 4:39pm
AI Challenge aiming to automate the identification process of sea turtles
6 October 2023 11:38am
The current method of tagging turtles for monitoring is intrusive, time-consuming, and expensive. Find out how automated recognition software using photo and video data can enhance monitoring efficiency and assist organizations dedicated to protecting these important species.
Four Amazing Impacts of This A.I.-Powered Bird Migration Tracker | Science| Smithsonian Magazine
5 October 2023 4:26pm
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GEO BON Monitoring Biodiversity for Action
5 October 2023 3:10pm
Mozilla Foundation, funding for nature conservation
4 October 2023 6:30pm
🚀 New Grant: 'Satellites for Biodiversity Award' Round 2
2 October 2023 1:50pm
GIS & Data Science Specialist
28 September 2023 1:32pm
Conservation Innovation Manager
27 September 2023 11:08pm
1st Wildlife Scientific Conference 2023
25 September 2023 11:10am
Geospatial Data Scientist, Varaha
25 September 2023 9:58am
Digital Disruption for Conservation Toolkit
22 September 2023 12:18pm
Made available by the Digital Disruption and the Future of Conservation project team at Unearthodox, the toolkit provides conservation practitioners with a comprehensive introduction to Web 3.0 and AI concepts and their potential use for nature conservation.
IUCN and AI2 to provide AI technology at no cost to fast-track implementation of newly signed UN High Seas Treaty
22 September 2023 9:54am
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