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!
- @Rob_Appleby
- | He/him
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
- | she/her
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.
- 3 Resources
- 8 Discussions
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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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Dr JOhn Read is founder and CEO of Conservation Innovation company Thylation, and founder and director of several adaptive management conservation projects . www.ecologicalhorizons.com, www.thylation.com, www.johnlread.com
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- @honeyBadger
- | she/her
Software developer looking for ways to contribute to animal conservation
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- 3 Discussions
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San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
Lead, San Diego Zoo Conservation Technology Lab
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Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology
Undertake and develop biodiversity monitoring
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Fauna & Flora
Remote Sensing Scientist
- 2 Resources
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Ocean Science Analytics
Marine mammal ecologist and online technical trainer
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- 29 Discussions
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Ted Schmitt joined us for a lunchtime lecture in which he shared his experiences working across Africa the past five years with protected area managers, anti-trafficking organisations, and scientists to effectively...
22 November 2018
Machine learning is widely recognized as the solution to camera trap data processing, but a user-friendly and broadly-accessible system for putting this tech to use has not yet been developed. In this case study,...
1 October 2018
Article
In this case study, conservation ecologist Ayesha Tulloch takes us behind the scenes of her recent paper, which came out in Nature Ecology & Evolution earlier this month. In this paper, Ayesha and her team present a...
20 August 2018
The winners of our Human Wildlife Conflict Tech Challenge are offering regular updates throughout the year to chronicle their failures, successes and what they learn along the way as they develop their solutions. In...
27 July 2018
Looking to prototype or pilot a new conservation tech idea or approach? Conservation X Labs is running an idea competition for teams to create a first draft (i.e. prototype) of their conservation solution. 20 finalists...
11 June 2018
Conflict between humans and wildlife is increasing as human communities expand and wild habitats are destroyed, prompting need for new mitigation techniques. As a winner of the Human Wildlife Conflict Tech Challenge,...
19 April 2018
Hundreds of people joined our #Tech4Wildlife photo challenge this year, showcasing all the incredible ways tech is being used to support wildlife conservation. We've seen proximity loggers on Tasmanian Devils in...
3 March 2018
Following the UK Government’s landmark announcement of plans to introduce a complete ban on the domestic trade in ivory, it was fitting that a new machine learning product designed to tackle the supply end of this...
6 December 2017
Article
A new research project is looking to investigate whether technology combined with the ancient skills and knowledge of Namibian trackers can help save cheetahs from extinction. Called FIT Cheetahs, the research project...
4 December 2017
With Arctic sea ice disappearing, can advanced sensor technologies provide insights into an ecosystem on the brink?
30 November 2017
Our panel of international experts has been hard at work reviewing the 47 proposals we recieved for innovative technological tools to address human wildlife conflict. The panelists have systematically been assessing the...
20 October 2017
The Domain Awareness System (DAS) is a revolution in monitoring technology, creating real-time awareness of protected areas assets. This technology has the potential to completely change standard monitoring procedures...
26 September 2017
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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I really hope you get this funding! You are so right about increasing the cost of poaching as a deterrent (snares destroyed, investment in snare cables and logistics all for... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 1 minute 21 seconds ago | |
Awesome! I am looking at something similar too - also awaiting funding. It's in SE Australia, also focusing on invasive species (red fox), protecting an area that has nesting... |
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AI for Conservation | 9 hours 23 minutes 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 | 5 days 6 hours ago | |
Yes, exactly! Alec and I are working together on this. |
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AI for Conservation | 1 week 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 | 1 week 6 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 | 2 weeks 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 | 2 weeks 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 | 2 weeks 1 day 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 | 2 weeks 4 days 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 | 3 weeks 2 days 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 | 3 weeks 2 days 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 | 3 weeks 2 days ago |
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
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
The 59th Annual Meeting of Illinois Chapter of The Wildlife Society
12 April 2023 5:24am
Who's going to ESA in Portland this year?
31 March 2023 9:27am
4 April 2023 9:58am
That sounds great. I think you should encourage people to bring a bit of tech with them, can be a good conversation starter/ice-breaker
4 April 2023 4:04pm
Good idea! I've got a ransom assortment of different acoustic recorders I can bring along
5 April 2023 11:58pm
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 one somewhere in a nearby park where we can look for wildlife. The latter would probably be at an obscenely early hour, so we can drive somewhere, ideally see elk (there are elk within 25 minutes of Portland!), and still get back in time for the morning sessions.
Computer Vision Competitions on Natural-World datasets
5 April 2023 4:26pm
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.