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!
- @Riley
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I'm a Data Scientist at Western EcoSystems Technology. I am interested in AI processing and statistical modeling of acoustic data and camera trap and drone imagery.
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- @Mumonkan
- | he / him
Wild Me
Software Engineer for Wildlife Conservation
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Cornell University
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- @volkankorkmaz
- | volkan
I have been working at the Underwater Association , to protect nature since 94 . Since 1992, I have been a PADI diving instructor
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Smart Parks
Founder of Smart Parks - www.smartparks.org / Founder of OpenCollar - https://opencollar.io
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- 13 Discussions
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- @tmcgrath
- | He / Him
Geographer, Program Manager, Engineering Manager
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Dzanga-Ndoki national park biodiversity monitoring
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- @derekrisch
- | He/Him
I'm a conservation ecologist working on invasive mammalian species. Use a variety of monitoring methods which provide an enormous amount of data (yay!) but require a lot of effort to process (nay!). Love keeping up to date on newest tech.
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World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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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 | 3 weeks 5 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 | 4 weeks 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 month 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 month 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 | 1 month 1 week ago | |
EcoAssist is an application designed to streamline the work of ecologists dealing with camera trap images. It’s an AI platform that... |
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Software and Mobile Apps, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
We could always use more contributors in open source projects. In most open source companies Red Hat, Anaconda, Red Hat and Mozilla, people often ended up getting hired largely... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Early Career, Marine Conservation | 1 month 3 weeks ago | |
Hi @timbirdweather I've now got them up and running and winding how I can provide feedback on species ID to improve the accuracy over time. It would be really powerful to have a... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Citizen Science, Emerging Tech | 2 months ago | |
Really interesting project. Interesting chip set you found. With up to around 2mb sram that’s quite a high memory for a ultra low power soc I think.It might also be... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation | 2 months 1 week ago | |
Thank you so much for your encouraging words! I'm thrilled to hear that you enjoyed our conversation, and I truly appreciate your support in spreading the word about my survey... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation | 2 months 2 weeks ago | |
Perfect thanks! I am still a novice using Python but my wife can help me! |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 2 months 4 weeks ago | |
Hi everyone! My name is Leah Govia and I am a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph, Canada. My research explores what people... |
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Ethics of Conservation Tech, Conservation Tech Training and Education, AI for Conservation | 3 months ago |
ConservationAI
20 October 2022 2:41pm
Conservation Technology Intern (Vietnam)
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Try AI Micro-Internship 2023
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11 October 2022 12:30pm
Artificial Intelligence and Conservation: Ethics
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Artificial Intelligence and Conservation: Prediction
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11 October 2022 12:23pm
The Smart Biosphere: How Technology can provide regenerative resources at scale
10 October 2022 12:06pm
Frontiers Symposium: Digital tools for reversing environmental degradation
5 October 2022 10:23am
Multi-day workshop: Machine Learning Advances for Marine Acoustics & Imagery Data
4 October 2022 5:20pm
Audio Across Domains Workshop 2022
3 October 2022 7:54pm
3 October 2022 11:40pm
11 October 2022 2:05pm
18 Sustainability Job Opportunities at Google
3 October 2022 7:09pm
New paper - Rookognise: Acoustic detection & identification of individual rooks in field recordings using multi-task neural networks
3 October 2022 2:35pm
Authors developed system to acoustically identify individual animals (under varying conditions) using combo of multi-scale information integration, multi-channel audio & multi-task learning. Tested on captive group of rooks.
New paper - FathomNet: A global image database for enabling artificial intelligence in the ocean
27 September 2022 9:44pm
Open-source image database that standardizes & aggregates expertly curated labeled underwater data, enabling AI in the ocean. Seeded with existing imagery of marine animals, underwater equipment, debris, etc. & allows for future contributions from distributed data sources.
Conservation Tech Directory - new update!
29 August 2022 2:38pm
23 September 2022 5:26pm
Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!
26 September 2022 10:07pm
Thanks so much!!
Mangrove soundscape
27 August 2022 4:57pm
29 August 2022 2:47pm
You might check out the devices listed in the Conservation Tech Directory - you can search for 'acoustic recorder' or 'ARU' or something like that.
The most common off-the-shelf models (other than Frontier Labs' BARLTs mentioned above😊) are Open Acoustic Devices Audiomoths & Hydromoths (which may be particularly useful for you since they come in completely watertight cases that can be stuck underwater for deployments), Wildlife Acoustics' SongMeter series, and Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Swift units.
30 August 2022 10:10pm
Camilo--
Are you interested only in airborne sounds or do you want to deploy hydrophones? That decision would inform a lot of other decisions about your purchase of equipment, as would having a clearer picture of your budget.
23 September 2022 5:39pm
Hi there Camilo,
What an interesting project! If you are looking for a lower cost, but effective tools for acoustic monitoring you might want to look into two options:
SoundTraps - are very commonly used and perform quite well:
SonarPoints - these are also a great instrument option:
Senior Conservation Technology Expert Position (Consultancy) with the Global Wildlife Program
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WIA After Hours: Episode #5 - AI for Wildlife Conservation and Imageomics with Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf
21 September 2022 6:53pm
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Research Software Engineer, Climate & Sustainability, IBM
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CamTrap Ecology meets AI conference
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Join the BirdNET team!
9 September 2022 2:43pm
Postdoc: Interpretable ML for species-based image classification
1 September 2022 9:34pm
New paper - 'soundClass: An automatic sound classification tool for biodiversity monitoring using machine learning'
1 September 2022 8:53pm
Silva et al -
- R package to train convolutional neural networks & employ them to classify sounds
- sound event classification pipeline, from annotating recordings to automating
trained networks
- case studies with bat & whale echolocation calls, bird songs
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Out of curiosity, what are the similarities/differences between your platform and other image classification ones such as Wildlife Insights, WildID, ZambaCloud? I don't mean that in like a "what's best" way, just would be great to better understand the the details so that people can assess what to try for their specific use cases & applications!
It would be great to have a comparative specs sheet of sorts! Peter Gyurov started something like that: https://www.notion.so/Camera-Trap-Pipeline-Solution-Comparison-2eac80825c4941b0b2b5fad3daea1cc3. Would be great to add ConservationAI to this list!