With experts across the WILDLABS community working with every type of technology and in every imaginable environment, our platform is a great place to find advice and resources on choosing what tools are right for your conservation project. Whether you're in the market to try a new camera trap model, want to experiment with drones for the first time, or need help weighing the pros and cons of data management tools, there's someone in the WILDLABS community who can help you make a smart and informed choice!
The Community Base is our general gathering group. It's the place where we cover more general, big picture topics in conservation technology - ones that don't fit neatly into our other groups. If you don't know where to post something, just post it in this group. Our moderators will move it if needed!
At our Community Base, you'll find updates from the WILDLABS team on upcoming events and opportunities, and have the chance to shape our programs and platform with your opinions. And most importantly, the Community Base is also home to our Welcome to WILDLABS thread, the best place to introduce yourself to us and the community. Stop by and tell us what you're working on!
Whether you're new to WILDLABS and want to know where to begin, or you're a longtime member looking for a handy bank of resources, our Getting Started on WILDLABS thread will be your one-stop guide to getting the most out of our platform.
Want to find out more about WILDLABS? Check out our recent community call:
Header image: Ana Verahrami/Elephant Listening Project
Group curators
- @StephODonnell
- | She / Her
WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
I'm the Executive Manager at WILDLABS.
- 152 Resources
- 668 Discussions
- 30 Groups
- @TaliaSpeaker
- | She/her
WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US
- 13 Resources
- 56 Discussions
- 24 Groups
- @EllieW
- | She/Her
- 64 Resources
- 124 Discussions
- 14 Groups
- @Jeffm
- | He/Him
- 0 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 4 Groups
Founder & CEO of we.are.tohorā, creating a community that cares about whales, the environment and each other.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 13 Groups
- @snapshot_serengeti
- | she/her
Fauna & Flora
Conservation, Innovation, Education
- 7 Resources
- 21 Discussions
- 9 Groups
- @dterlip
- | He/Him
Career technologist looking to move into the conservation space
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 3 Groups
- @Sarvagya
- | He/Him
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- @leonardoscarpa
- | He/His
I'm Leonardo, I'm a biologist, and I'm passionate about movement ecology. Another of my hobbies is GIS. I have a master's degree in this topic, which I complement with the use of technology such as drones, camera traps and acoustic receivers
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 10 Groups
Software engineer
- 0 Resources
- 3 Discussions
- 3 Groups
- @womble
- | he/him
AI Researcher, mostly NLP, with 30+ years experience. Recently consulted for a company ding drone image analysis and Google Cloud
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 6 Groups
- @Thomas_Luypaert
- | He/him
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU)
Ecological monitoring enthusiast with a focus on ecological and conservation research
- 1 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 7 Groups
Technologist and Visual storyteller focusing on social, conservations issues.
- 0 Resources
- 31 Discussions
- 16 Groups
- @Hansa
- | He/Him
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 6 Groups
- 2 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 2 Groups
The Fonseca Species Conservation Fund supports early career conservationists working on projects regarding threatened amphibians, freshwater fish, primates, small mammals, tortoises and freshwater turtles 'in urgent...
29 May 2024
National Conservation Trust Fund of Jamaica opens a call for proposals regarding protected areas and other areas of high environmental importance.
26 May 2024
Are you passionate about marine wildlife conservation? Excited to network and collaborate with fellow enthusiasts? Join us in launching the Coastal and Marine Wildlife Working Group within The Wildlife Society!
23 May 2024
The IEF's Elephant Conservation and Research Funding Support Program has opened a call for applications. Average grant size is $15K, whereas the IEF funds 20 to 25 projects per year.
22 May 2024
Save Our Seas (SOS) opened a call for small grants for 'original and innovative start-up projects' concerning marine chondrichthyan species (sharks, rays, skates, sawfishes and chimaeras). Projects can be in research,...
19 May 2024
Funding
The UK government's 'Reversing Environmental Degradation in Africa and Asia' program opened a call for applications for "locally led, multi-locational, research-to-action for restoration programmes".
19 May 2024
Do you have photos and videos of your conservation tech work? We want to include them in a conservation technology showcase video
17 May 2024
The Biodiversity Finance Initiative ( BIOFIN, a UNDP initiative ) launched a database with over 330 public and private funding opportunities.
4 May 2024
Article
Read in detail about how to use The Inventory, our new living directory of conservation technology tools, organisations, and R&D projects.
1 May 2024
Article
The Inventory is your one-stop shop for conservation technology tools, organisations, and R&D projects. Start contributing to it now!
1 May 2024
Technology to End the Sixth Mass Extinction. Salary: $132 - $160k; Location: Seattle WA; 7+ years of experience in hardware product development and manufacturing; View post for full job description
1 May 2024
Tap into our new and exciting community-focused conversation series! In this first season of InConversation, we're in East Africa with host Esther Githinji. Listen in as we chat one-on-one with your favourite...
30 April 2024
June 2024
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi wildlabbers! Every second friday, we host a work out loud space here in the community. We host it the day our digest hits... |
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Community Base | 1 year 11 months ago | |
Hi all!Dropping back in to share that we're thinking about how supply chain issues tie into our upcoming series on conservation tech sustainability. We've started a Twitter thread... |
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Community Base | 1 year 11 months ago | |
@gracieermi & I are happy to announce the latest update to the Conservation Tech Directory, bringing our total resources in the... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Camera Traps, Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Drones, eDNA & Genomics, Remote Sensing & GIS, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 year 11 months ago | |
Hi Carly, Thanks for digging up my previous thread (I couldn't find it). I guess I've been asking this question for a few years now!I had also heard of grants from car... |
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Community Base | 1 year 11 months ago | |
Hi Isobel, Great to hear from you! I would love to learn more and connect so that I can discuss with the team further. You can reach me here: [email protected] . Thank... |
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Community Base | 1 year 11 months ago | |
This is a great one! I will be attending virtually.Though did not receive any feedback to the emails I sent them about issues registrating. Had to call them from Italy to get a... |
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Community Base | 1 year 11 months ago | |
Hey all!I'm well into my journey into the field of conservation now, after volunteering and freelancing for a couple of different... |
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Biologging, Community Base, Open Source Solutions | 1 year 11 months ago | |
ha, I totally didn't expect you to jump into this thread Netty but I'm here for it! Your twitter takeover this week has been super fun to watch, definitely one of my highlights... |
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Community Base | 1 year 11 months ago | |
Hi Courtney, Over on Twitter your question has had a useful reply from CodeforPDX:Steph |
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Community Base | 1 year 11 months ago | |
There are only a few days left to apply to the 2022 Gathering for Open Science Hardware! Join a community of scientists, hardware developers, artists, and activists... |
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Community Base, Open Source Solutions | 2 years 1 month ago | |
Hi all! My name is Gabi Fleury and I'm part of the Black Mammalogists Week organizing committee and will be collaborating with WILDLABS on setting up this May 3rd... |
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Community Base | 2 years 1 month ago | |
An update on my audio cases. I tried changing a few things. 1. Changed battery brand and thus the age of the batteries I was being supplied. The Tadiran cells being supplied... |
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Community Base | 2 years 1 month ago |
NSF Activate Fellowship
26 September 2022 7:22pm
New Platform Help: How do I...?
6 May 2022 9:36am
7 September 2022 4:20pm
Another potential thing to add - maybe getting more specific than country on location? Like adding state/province/city? To make the member directory searchable on a smaller geographic scale. I've seen lots of posts recently on Bioacoustics Stack Exchange, AI for Conservation Slack, & others looking for people based in a particular region or city and it got me thinking about how the WILDLABS member directory could provide that. Just a thought!
23 September 2022 3:36pm
Thanks Carly! I'll pop this on the list of features to discuss with developers. Putting broader regions on the existing list might be possible. It could also be useful to get more specific but it might require re-working how the filter works or adding more filters. Maybe at some stage we could have a big wildlabs member map (although that might potentially lead to some data privacy issues).
In the meantime some people put their city in their bio, which is searchable on the members section.
WILDLABS Digest: 23 September 2022
23 September 2022 12:05pm
Our latest WILDLABS Community digest has just hit inboxes! Don't have time to keep up with everything that's happening in the conservation tech world? This email is for you!
Workshop: Building UK Partnerships for Conservation Technology
22 September 2022 3:02pm
Catch Up with The Variety Hour: November 2022
22 September 2022 2:12pm
Catch Up with the Variety Hour: October 2022
22 September 2022 1:59pm
WILDLABS Journal Club
15 September 2022 11:42am
15 September 2022 12:17pm
Ah Journal club - this was a lot of fun but a little chaotic. We've been wondering if we should bring it back with a slightly different format. ie we all agree on a paper to read before rather than bringing a mix of things to present. What does everyone think? Is anyone else keen? Is there a format you'd suggest we use?
15 September 2022 3:49pm
I have been waiting for journal club to come back!! 10000% down.
I agree with @StephODonnell, would love it to come back!!! And now that variety hour is happening, that's more of the "mix of things" that she mentioned anyways so I think that new format would be great.
Closing soon: WILDLABS State of Conservation Tech Survey 2022
14 September 2022 12:42am
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge Countdown
8 September 2022 11:03pm
Join the #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge!
8 September 2022 10:21pm
Starting today: Join the 7th annual #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge!
6 September 2022 10:06am
7 September 2022 8:37pm
Survey for Doctoral Research on Poaching in Protected Areas
29 August 2022 10:43pm
Catch Up with the WILDLABS Variety Hour: August 2022
10 August 2022 11:44am
Survey: The role and applicability of block-chain technology in conservation survey
3 August 2022 3:28pm
Any results coming out of this survey that you would like to share?
What are your biggest sustainability challenges and issues in your work?
27 June 2022 4:18pm
29 June 2022 12:39am
Hey all!
I mentioned that on Friday, we'd update this post with all the sustainability conversations happening across our platform, but I wanted to flag this great Twitter thread right now in case anyone wants to jump in! Lots of interesting conversation about challenges with transporting batteries to field sites on planes and using rechargeable batteries in the comments.
Check it out here:
7 July 2022 12:19pm
Hi David,
Yes and no. A lot of organizations have realized that we also need to talk about co-benefits in such projects, especially when it comes to biodiversity. So, it's definitely not only about carbon anymore. however, most players struggle on how to measure and communicate biodiversity impacts. At WWF, we partnered for instance with Restor, who is trying to incorporating biodiversity
1 August 2022 5:57pm
During a volunteer project, I ran into some stupefying experiences with camera traps, one of those 'corner stones', it seems, of nature conservation research.
Everybody who works with camera traps knows it, but it was new to me, and I think it can't hurt to point out the glaringly obvious here:
They consume no less than 8 AA batteries per run. I've seen a project description boasting the use of 200 camera traps if I remember correctly. That is 1600 batteries and I sure hope they are able to retrieve every single one of them.
Secondly, the manual of the camera trap that I had purchased explicitly discouraged the use of rechargeable batteries. I tried it anyways and indeed, the camera seems to run shorter on them. Tip to myself for next time : download and read the manual first before purchasing.
Thirdly, in the country where I did the volunteer project it was completely unclear if there was a battery recycling system in place. It seemed to depend on the town and private initiative. The question now is to which extent camera traps for nature conservation are used in countries with a proper recycling system?
Fourthly, the project had a couple of camera traps that 'didn't work'. A few of these just needed some spraying with contact spray helped ( a whole different topic, but what is the environmental impact of contact spray? Does that weigh up to replacing the electronics? ). A few others seemed to suffer from the same problem. They contain a button cell that seems to power the clock and perhaps some other functions when the AA batteries are lacking. This button cell had gone bad, that is, rusted away. In the traps that I checked, the button cell was soldered to the electronics board. I had no means to replace them, so I do not know for sure that the faulty cell was the source of the problem. This really is a disclaimer, the camera traps seemed pretty old, and other things might caused the malfunction.
I found only one online source about these button cells in camera traps. It is listed below.
At least it indicates that this happens more often and that the cell is probably not rechargeable. If so, I find it a major design flaw. Would it not be better to make the button cells replaceable and /or rechargeable? Or do without them completely?
See
SOLVED: Identify faulty soldered PCB Lithium button cell replacement battery - Miscellaneous Electronics
Hi @steveout , If the board is still working try measuring the voltage on the battery when power is connected to the board or disconnect the battery from the board and measure the voltage on the board at the battery connections to get the o/c voltage reading This should give you a good idea as to... - Miscellaneous Electronics
iFixit
Get to Know WILDBEAR Awardee Alyssa Bohart
27 July 2022 10:12pm
Equipment Swap Meet/Giveaways
17 April 2019 2:28pm
25 October 2019 9:43pm
Hi Carl,
No problem and happy to go with the name you are most comfortable with. Looking forward to saying hi at the virtual meetup!
Cheers,
Rob
1 July 2022 7:48pm
Hi all!
Just wanted to drop in and share that we're having a lot of discussions around sustainability right now, and we're thinking about how the conservation tech community can recycle old tools in sustainable ways. Swaps and exchanges feel like they fit perfectly into that conversation!
If any of you would like to drop into this discussion thread on practical steps toward sustainability and share your experiences with swapping tools, we'd love to hear from you!
26 July 2022 6:40pm
Hi all doing some spring cleaning. Just pay shipping.
I have:
-20 new Taoglas FXUB63 Ultra Wide Band Antenna 698-3000MHz we don't need. The ones that come with Boron's.
-90 Phoenix Contact TERM BLK 4P SIDE ENT 5.08MM PCB
-45 Omron RELAY GEN PURPOSE SPST 10A 12V, G5LE-1A DC12
We have so much stuff we'll never use. Will post more as I sort through it. If you need something in particular let me know. Might get lucky.
If by chance someone knows where I could find some ATSAMD21G18A-MFT or similar let me know!
Introducing WILDBEAR Awardee Alyssa Bohart
22 July 2022 12:27am
Tech Tutors East Africa: Call for Topics and Speakers
19 July 2022 9:28am
19 July 2022 11:41am
Definitely second doing one on SMART! It's been asked about before a number of times in other virtual events so I think the need/want is for sure there.
19 July 2022 12:20pm
100%! Also heard many asking about SMART Connect & Mobile, and their integration with other software.
Thank you for your input :)
Call for Abstracts for #AGU22 Fall Meeting: Applications of Earth Observations for Addressing Environmental and Development Challenges in Africa
18 July 2022 6:43am
Conservation Data Coordinator
15 July 2022 11:02am
Writing Bootcamp: Ask the WILDLABS Editor
6 July 2022 8:29pm
7 July 2022 12:10am
Awesome! We were wondering about writing on WildLabs now that you can publish articles to specific topics. My writing skills are a bit rusty too. Looking forward to the article series :)
14 July 2022 3:11am
Thanks Akiba, hope you liked the series and found it helpful! Can't wait to see what you share! If you ever need someone to help brainstorm ideas on how to approach specific topics, drop in here anytime!
Service Designer
13 July 2022 9:05am
Writing Bootcamp: Shaping Your Story
7 July 2022 10:10pm
Writing Bootcamp: Questions for Writers
6 July 2022 10:47pm
4 October 2023 6:39pm
Knowing Nature: New conservation technologies & knowledge systems to support the SDGs and post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework
5 July 2022 8:46pm
New Platform Help: Troubleshooting & bugs
6 May 2022 9:21am
5 July 2022 6:40am
I have had two this week. Is there a way to report/ block them?
Messages have started with "Hello Darling" so do not think they are conservation orientated
5 July 2022 9:39am
Okay great - thanks for flagging this. It's helpful to know it didn't just come to our team's accounts - we also got the same message and blocked the account immediately. Til now our spam filiters have working well blocking accounts like this at the registration stage, but we're going to change some things to prevent abuse of the DM system. We're having a meeting to finalise some decisions on it this morning - will report back after.
Thanks!
Steph
5 July 2022 11:28am
Quick report on what we're doing on the technical side:
First of all, so sorry that this has happened. We worked hard on spam prevention on the registration system and after lots of effort using many different methods, managed to cut that down to zero or almost zero. At least for automated "bot" accounts.
But the user account involved in this seems to have got by that and then used our bespoke messaging system to spam recently logged in users. From the facts that
- it targeted recently logged in users (who appear in that order on the member directory)
- the messages are spaced apart in time in a way that a robot would probably not do
I suspect this is a manual copy-paste spammer.
We're working on reporting tools and other ways to prevent this but for now we've changed the system so that messages from blocked users will no longer be shown in member inboxes.
Please continue to report spam issues to the WILDLABS team until we work out further solutions for reporting.
Any suggestions from other platforms you use on which reporting tools you find the most helpful will also be much appreciated. We'd love to fix this in a way that helps with any other platform abuse issues that might come up in the future as the community grows.
Writing Bootcamp: What content type fits my story?
1 July 2022 10:19pm
Friday Check In (+ Mid-year reflection prompts)
1 July 2022 11:32am
Announcing Our Upcoming Sustainability Series
30 June 2022 8:54pm
1 September 2022 8:57pm
Ha, I literally said the same thing after posting my last link - 280 is so much less than you think. We're going to increase it a bit. We are still going to keep the editing tools minimal, that was purposeful. We don't want every type of post to behave exactly the same as it gets confusing. Links are intended to be straightfoward and quick, a link with a short description or commentary. Anything else you should be starting a proper discussion or creating a longer post.