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AI for Conservation / Feed

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the field to analyse information collected by wildlife conservationists, from camera trap and satellite images to audio recordings. AI can learn how to identify which photos out of thousands contain rare species; or pinpoint an animal call out of hours of field recordings - hugely reducing the manual labour required to collect vital conservation data.

discussion

Is anyone or platform supporting ML for camera trap video processing (id-ing jaguar)? 

Stephanie O'Donnell

27 November 2023 10:49am

Hi wildlabbers, I have another colleague looking for support for getting started using AI for processing videos coming out of their camera traps - specifically for species ID...

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Lars Holst Hansen

27 November 2023 11:42am

Hi!

There was a very related and very recent thread on video from camera traps here:

Video camera trap analysis help | WILDLABS

Hello,I'm a complete newbie so any help would be appreciated. I never trained any ML models (have junior/mid experience with Python and R) nor annotated the data but would like to learn. We have set couple of camera traps that record videos on vulture feeding sites and I am tasked to analyze the video data for their presence.I thought that using Megadetector could work but it seems to me it only takes in images so I don't know where to start. What would you use, is there a pipeline (or articles/repositories/video) about how best to approach the task? Thanks in advance.

wildlabsnet

It is always possible to split videos into frames using ffmpeg (or https://ffmpeg-batch.sourceforge.io) or similar and then feed the to the ML workflow. I am pretty sure ffmpeg can do something clever with meta data and filenames so metadata follows the files.

Cheers,

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discussion

Hydromoth for coastal & offshore surveying

Sol Milne

16 November 2023 7:36am

Hi all! I'm interested in deploying a Hydromoth on an Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV) to collect acoustic data for biodiversity analysis, for coastal and offshore marine surveys....

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Harold Tay

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:

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discussion

Instant Detect 2.0 and related cost

Kaarthika Chandran

16 November 2023 12:50am

I am doing a research project on rhino poaching at Kruger National Park. I was impressed with the idea of Instant Detect 2.0. I do not know the cost involved with installing that...

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Sam Seccombe

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

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Link

Insight; a secure online platform designed for sharing experiences of conservation tool use.

Cleo Graf

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.

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Welcome to Insight

Wildlife crime refers to any illegal activity that involves the taking, trading, or possession of wild animals and plants, or their parts and derivatives.

Insight
discussion

DeepFaune: a software for AI-based identification of mammals in camera-trap pictures and videos

Simon Chamaillé-Jammes

14 July 2023 3:14pm

Hello everyone, just wanted to advertise here the DeepFaune initiative that I lead with Vincent Miele. We're building AI-based species recognition models for camera-trap...

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German Forero

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

Kim Hendrikse

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.

Ed Miller

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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discussion

BirdWeather | PUC

Tim Clark

27 October 2023 7:45pm

Hi Everyone,I just found out about this site/network!I wanted to introduce myself - I'm the CEO of a little company called Scribe Labs.  We're the small team behind...

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Alex Rood

2 November 2023 9:20pm

I love the live-stream pin feature!

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event

A SPOTLIGHT ON CUTTING-EDGE BIOMONITORING TECHNOLOGIES

Thomas Luypaert

31 October 2023 9:09am

Join us in our session to feature the latest developments and applications in groundbreaking biomonitoring tech in the tropics

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ANDREA VARELA

15 November 2023 6:10pm

Hello!The Galápagos Islands can be considered Tropics? We do drone monitoring of the marine iguanas with the project Iguanas from Above :)Thanks.Andrea Varela
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Link

Nepal's tiger conservation gets tech boost with AI-powered deer tracking

Esther Githinji

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.

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careers

Acoustic Monitoring Specialist

Mandy Holmgren

26 October 2023 7:32pm

The Institute for Bird Populations (IBP) seeks a California-based acoustic monitoring specialist to collect, manage, and process avian acoustic data from multiple research and conservation projects across California...

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Link

Soundscapes and deep learning enable tracking biodiversity recovery in tropical forests

Stephanie O'Donnell

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

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careers

ZSL Research Fellow (x3 roles)

Zoological Society of London

20 October 2023 3:34pm

The Institute of Zoology (IoZ), the research division of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), is seeking to fill three new permanent positions by recruiting outstanding early-career researchers as Research Fellows (...

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