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!
- @LouisaRC
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LRC Wildlife Conservation
With 20 years' experience as a Conservation Practitioner, I've transitioned from carnivore scientist to Dean, nurturing African conservation leaders. My focus now is on leveraging innovative Web 3.0 technologies for maximum conservation impact.
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Heading up comms for a conservation agency based in the United Arab Emirates
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- @roboticscats
- | He / him / his
Founder & CEO of RoboticsCats, a machine vision startup. Our AI wildfire detection SaaS is protecting forests & communities in Asia, Europe & LATAM.
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- @amtsongo
- | Mr
African Parks
African Parks/D.R. Congo
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18+ Years of IT experience and worked on all phases of SDLC. Technical reviewer for couple of international books. Looking to break into AI space and want to gain more experience on AI/machine learning
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Purdue University
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- @MattyD797
- | He/Him
I am studying biotic problems with abiotic intelligence. My research focus is in computational ecology within fishery acoustics, machine learning, remote sensing, and combining visual and audio species identification systems.
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- @jelena5011
- | she
Love animals and nature
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Neuroscientist & engineer transitioning to conservation tech. I have experience working with large imaging datasets, pose estimation and positional tracking, and machine learning. Looking to get involved with GIS, remote sensing, and AI for conservation.
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Careers
The Smithsonian National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute is seeking a Program Manager to help coordinate multiple organizations in an effort to integrate movement data & camera trap data with global...
22 April 2024
The Smithsonian National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to help us integrate movement data & camera trap data with global conservation policy.
22 April 2024
Join the Seeed Vision Challenge, an opportunity for conservation innovators to harness the power of AI vision sensors for environmental monitoring and protection.
10 April 2024
Full-Stack Software Developer (Python/React) - Specializing in AI/ML for Wildlife Conservation
5 April 2024
Article
Article from Ars Technica about how difficult it is to detect and avoid kangaroos...
3 April 2024
18 month postdoc research position, Netherlands, EU-funded
28 March 2024
Article
You’re invited to the WILDLABS Variety Hour, a monthly event that connects you to conservation tech's most exciting projects, research, and ideas. We can't wait to bring you a whole new season of speakers and...
22 March 2024
Join our multi-national team at the AI for Biodiversity Change Global Climate Center! We're hiring a Research Data Manager & Tech Coordinator at Ohio State. Support cutting-edge research on climate change &...
15 March 2024
Catch up on the conservation tech discussions and events that happened during World Wildlife Day 2024!
7 March 2024
EcoAssist introduces a free African species identification model for camera trap images, capable of recognising 30 species.
5 March 2024
Join us to help prevent biodiversity loss! Understory is hiring a postdoc to lead R&D Development on generalizing Computer Vision models for vegetation identification across space/time/phenotypes.
29 February 2024
Join the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) in pioneering environmental and ecological monitoring! 🌍💡 As part of ERIN’s Observatory for Climate, Environment, and Biodiversity (OCEB), you'll be at the...
26 February 2024
May 2024
September 2024
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October 2024
October 2023
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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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 | 2 days 3 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 | 2 days 4 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 | 2 days 6 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 | 2 days 12 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 | 2 days 15 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 | 2 days 16 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 | 4 days 18 hours 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 | 4 days 20 hours 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 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 2 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 2 days ago | |
Greetings Everyone, We are so excited to share details of our WILDLABS AWARDS project "Enhancing Pollinator Conservation through Deep... |
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AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 2 weeks 4 days ago |
New microprocessor for low power AI camera & audio applications from Microchip
3 June 2022 8:36pm
Global Forest Watch Small Grants Fund
1 June 2022 4:19pm
Post-doc in Multi-Sensor Fusion for Animal Biomechanics
1 June 2022 9:56am
Enhancing automated analysis of marine soundscapes using eco-acoustic indices and machine learning
31 May 2022 6:33pm
UKAN+ Monitoring UK Biodiversity Symposium 15-16th June
31 May 2022 2:58pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Future Questions & Tools in Movement Ecology
24 May 2022 10:10pm
A comprehensive review on biodiversity information portals
9 May 2022 3:16pm
Executive Director - The Eric & Wendy Schmidt Center for Data Science & Environment, UC Berkeley
9 May 2022 10:13am
CV4Ecology Summer School
3 May 2022 6:13pm
WILDLABS Virtual Meetups Season Four: Tracking Progress
29 April 2022 9:57am
News: The Latest in Conservation Tech (March 24)
24 March 2022 12:00am
Apply now: Women in Conservation Technology Programme, Kenya
8 March 2022 12:00am
BirdCLEF 2022 Kaggle Challenge
2 March 2022 12:00am
Introducing the WILDLABS On the Edge Fellows
10 February 2022 12:00am
WILDLABS Fellowships & Awards: Matchmaking between tech and conservation
28 January 2022 3:22pm
Deep Learning for Marine Ecology and Conservation
20 December 2021 12:00am
AI for Conservation Office Hours: are you interested?
8 October 2021 12:00pm
14 December 2021 2:47pm
We've now wrapped our first run of AI for Conservation Office Hours and you can read my review of how it went and lessons learned here.
Given the overall success of the programme, we're excited to announce that in early spring next year we will be coordinating a second round - so keep an eye out for further updates in the new year on the application and sign-up process.
Also, we'd love to know whether you'd be interested in having a 1:1 so comment below and tell us what conservation tech challenge you would like to cover or how a session could help you in your conservation work.
Many thanks,
Lucas
AI for Conservation Office Hours: 2021 Review
14 December 2021 12:00am
Low-cost underwater camera trapping and deep learning
30 November 2021 12:00am
The race to save California's rarest butterflies
29 November 2021 12:00am
Environmental Data Justice
26 November 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: The Promise and Pitfalls of Machine Learning for Conservation
23 November 2021 12:00am
Caiman: Images as Sources of Intelligence
18 November 2021 12:00am
Try our open-source automatic camera trap detection/labeling tool!
12 November 2021 8:39pm
Opportunity: GEO-Microsoft Planetary Computer Programme
4 November 2021 12:00am
EarthRanger Announces Inaugural Conservation Tech Award Recipients
3 November 2021 12:00am
Opportunity: PhD or Postdoctoral Research Fellowships - Chinstrap penguin biologging
1 November 2021 12:00am
Using IoT and Machine Learning to help protect Kenya's Rivers
21 October 2021 12:00am
Tech Tutors: How do I analyze large acoustic datasets using PAMGuard?
14 October 2021 3:42pm
How do I analyze large acoustic datasets using PAMGuard?
7 October 2021 12:00am
25 October 2021 4:13pm
Hi Wildlabbers!
We're now going ahead with a small pilot of around ten 1:1 office hour sessions with Microsoft AI for Earth specialists. More details coming very soon.
For the time being sign-ups are now closed, but thank you to everyone who has been interested. We will keep you updated on how the 1:1s go and whether there will be further sessions to sign up for later in the year.
Cheers,
Lucas