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The WILDLABS Community Base is the ideal place to get oriented with the all that our community platform offers, hear about news and opportunitys, and to meet new friends and collaborators. 

discussion

What are your biggest sustainability challenges and issues in your work?

Update: You can now find all of the discussions and twitter threads in one place here on WILDLABS! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - We’re so excited to announce...

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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:

Battery Twitter Thread

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

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 

 

 

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discussion

Equipment Swap Meet/Giveaways

Hi all, as Steph mentioned in a recent post, I'd like to offload some equipment I have at hand (a bunch of second-hand, but good quality 9603 Iridium modems and...

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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

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! 

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                                                                       

https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/phoenix-contact/1017505/9346606?s=N4IgTCBcDaIIwAY4HYCsDUgLoF8g

-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!

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discussion

Tech Tutors East Africa: Call for Topics and Speakers

Hello everyone,We're so excited to announce that our popular Tech Tutors series is coming back soon, with a new regional focus! This year, our sessions will feature experts from...

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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. 

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careers

Conservation Data Coordinator 

Giraffe Conservation Foundation
Giraffe Conservation Foundation has now opened this opportunity to qualified candidates willing to work remotely. The position is desktop-based and the successful candidate can work from anywhere in the world to provide...

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discussion

Writing Bootcamp: Ask the WILDLABS Editor

Hi wildlabbers! Ellie here - I'm the WILDLABS editor! We've just launched a short series of Writing Bootcamp articles to help you get started writing your...

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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 :)

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!

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careers

Service Designer

Love design, passionate about conversation? Want to make sure that  technologies that are being developed actually meet the needs of the people who use them? Come and work for us! 

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article

Writing Bootcamp: Shaping Your Story

In this series, we'll share tips from our editorial team to help you get started writing great case studies, articles, and blog posts right here on WILDLABS! In our third post, Ellie Warren shares advice on structuring...

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article

Writing Bootcamp: Questions for Writers

In this series, we'll share tips from our editorial team to help you get started writing great case studies, articles, and blog posts right here on WILDLABS! In this second post, Ellie Warren shares the questions that...

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There is no space for photo credits for the header image. Might be a neat feature. I am using a free photo platform and think that the photographers deserve a bit more support....
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discussion

New Platform Help: Troubleshooting & bugs

Hi wildlabbers, We're so pleased to introduce you to the new WILDLABS Platform. For the past 18 months, we've been hard at work building a new home for our...

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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 

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 

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.

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discussion

Developers, Makers, & Engineers: Recent Supply Chain Issues

Hey Widlabbers, We've heard from several of you who build hardware and develop tech that suppy chains have been slowed down and complicated by COVID-19 impacts recently. We...

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I haven't been affected, my quantities are small and they are all jellybean parts. nothing remotely exotic.

Yes, I am also having supply problems lately, not so much of components as of plates or other materials that I have to receive from Japan (;-), Australia, China, ... My impression is that bottlenecks are occurring in some parts of the supply chain. I imagine that the COVID and the shutdown of the Suez Canal for days did not help ...

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 about it here: 

Feel free to continue sharing your thoughts in this discussion thread as well - we'd love to hear more about how the supply chain issues have continued to impact you, as well as how your experiences have related to our questions about sustainability, whether positively or negatively!

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discussion

Grants for vehicles

Hi all,  It is an understatement to write that vehicles are necessary for efficient conservation. We all need motorbikes, pickup trucks, 4x4 to get to the places where...

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There was a previous Wildlabs thread on this - https://wildlabs.net/discussion/conservation-grants-field-vehicles but it didn't garner any comments unfortunately. 

I'm not sure if IdeaWild allows for car repairs? The grants are for equipment specifically. That's a small grant anyways though ($1500) so you'd probably need something bigger it sounds like.

I don't know of any grants specifically funding this, but most people I know who have gotten vehicles have applied for bigger grants that they write a new vehicle into as a budget line item (e.g., WWF, WCS, CI, MBZ, national agencies like NSF).   

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 companies but it seems they stopped doing this (or limit their support to areas around their factories, like Toyota). 

 

 

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discussion

Invitation to Silverstrand Capital's Biodiversity Accelerator+

Are you an entrepreneur working to solve the biodiversity crisis through market-based solutions? If so, this call is for you!The Biodiversity Accelerator+ is a three-month...

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Hi Stephanie, 

Thanks for getting back! I have updated the link to our website, where we have our launch event recording and the application form for companies.

In short, we are looking for companies past ideation stage employing either nature tech and/or nature-based solutions. While this is a global call, we will prefer if the company is currently operating in or have intent to operate in South East Asia. We have more examples at our website but I will be happy to answer your questions if any. 

Do follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/silverstrand-capital/ and feel free to share with your network as well! We do see biodiversity as a serious crisis to tackle and we want to empower founders that are mission-aligned with us. 

Dean

Hi Dean,

I love the sound of this accelerator, it's the sort of thing I'm looking to support through Cambridge Consultants' Tech for Good initiative. We're engineers, scientists and designers who could help with advice around building a first prototype of a new technology, or what it takes to get a technology to market quickly, just for example. Would you like to connect for an initial exploratory chat?

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discussion

What events/workshops are you looking forward to? 

Hi wildlabbers, I need some hivemind help! What conservation tech related events are you looking forward to in the next few months? I'm talking webinars, workshops,...

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Hi Steph,

Great to hear back. Yes, mostly working on forest conservation and fire in the West but also conservation finance (analog and automated platforms to leverage public/private funding) and remote sensing a fair bit. I need to get back to carnivores! How about you?

Best,

V

Sounds great Stephanie, thanks! I think I'm going to go ahead and put a post in the main Acoustics group also, and then will use the instructions to link that post to the event calendar. Thanks again!

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 response, was not fun -.-" ! But very excited about this event, hopefully everything runs smoothly for us attending virtually, although I'm a little discouraged.

Cheers :)

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discussion

Friday check in - what have you been working on this week? 

Hi everyone, How are you all doing this week? I'd love to hear about what you've been working on - drop into the thread today and share photos, wins/fails, interesting...

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Alrighty, since I may as well participate in my own thing and I have thoughts about the tech4wildlife world this week..

It's been a very welcome calm week over with our team. It's been a really crazy nine months so it feels like this week has been the first time we've had a chance to do a big inhale.

I'm still so happy the new wildlabs platform is live out in the world and you all seem to be enjoying it - we've had 250+ new members join in the last few weeks, users are up 70% compared to this time last year and pageviews are up 160%. And we're seeing heaps of activity!

That pageview figure is particularly important for us for right now, as it means we're hitting that big goal of making all the great information sharing by our community easier to find and explore. As activity keeps scaling up, the challenge we're going to face will be about curation and making sure it's not just overwhelming. We have some tools, ways of configuring the site, different roles and new programmes ready to respond and help with that, but for now we're just happy you're all finding and starting to use the platform. 

We are doing deployments every week to fix bugs, improve performance & launch new features. This week was a big one- our DM system went live, which has been the most requested feature. If you're curious, @FilipNest is providing an amusing deployment log here. 

This week we've also been doing a big feature about our East Africa Community - @Netty_Cheruto took over all our socials (@wildlabsnet and WILDLABS Community) to share updates from the first workshop of our Women In Conservation Tech Programme: Kenya. 

Our East Africa Community is the first regional WILDLABS community. It is the first step in our plan to establish locally led regional communities to connect and support #tech4wildlife practitioners all over the globe. 

And finally, this week I've also spent a lot of time poking around various parts of the #tech4wildlife ecosystem. A few highlights..

This week I'm seeing a lot of questions coming up about career paths in #tech4wildlife. More than usual - which makes me wonder if it's time for us to do a proper series sharing different career paths people have taken into the sector (shout out if you want us to do this?)

EDIT: I'm getting DMs about this, so have started a thread here if you have ideas about us doing a series about career paths. Tell us your ideas here!

If you have advice.. 

  • @soumyabhatta ya is asking how to make the jump from a 30yr IT career into conservation over 3-6 months Conversation here
  • If you're in the bioacoustic world, PhD student @esnyder is planning his next career steps and is curious to hear about realities of different #bioacoustic career paths. I like how he frames his questions quite specifically and I'm curious to see replies, so please jump in. Conversation here
  • The final one is a bit different/interesting - @Joyeeta  is looking for cofounders in a climate/conservation tech company, and brings a background in engineering and experience from raising $15m for his last company and 2 exits. Conversation here

My favourite ongoing convo this week is this discussion about solutions for tracking goats on a remote mountainous island. So much good advice and real experience being shared in it.

My favourite open question. We're seeing that most straight foward #tech4wildlife questions are being answered pretty quickly by our community, but if you're into #drones, @LindyClydeKnowlesasked one yesterday that still open but should be a simple answer if you have a moment.  He's looking for advice about open source photogrammetry software options

Finally, my fav article this week was from the team at Fieldkit about the impacts of the chip shortage on conservation tech - we've been hearing a lot of chat about this from our community, so the article and the subsquent comments on twitter etc have been interesting. 

Right, I think that's a wrap from me. Our digest will hit inboxes in the next few hours so I'll drop a link to it as a final tweet to wrap this thread then. In the meantime - how's your week going? Would love to hear/see updates!

Steph 

This has been a really exciting week for me! A lot of cool stuff happening in the WILDLABS East Africa Community. Well, first of all we launched the community and I am happy to see all the interactions happening there. If you are based in East Africa- have you joined the Community? If not, then, head on over here; introduce yourself, take time to explore the resources we have and engage in the discussions- I am looking forward to your inputs on ongoing discussions e,g:

  •  If you are using EarthRanger, I'd love to hear all about your interactions with the tool here.
  • What are some of the Conservation Technology gaps in East Africa? Share your insights here.

Then, I also had a hand in reporting on the first workshop of our Inaugural Women in Conservation Technology Programme; this was a great reminisce of the week we had with the cohort and I'm really excited for what lies ahead and to also witness the impacts of capacity building and mentorship on emerging conservation leaders. If you haven't already, you can catch up with all the updates in this article, and in our socials (Twitter and LinkedIn), as Steph has mentioned. 

Aside from that, I came across a couple of interesting projects and work, that we will definitely highlight in the community. It was a great week and I'm looking forward to continue on with learning, interacting, exploring and highlighting more on conservation technology!

Netty.

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discussion

Looking for examples of cities using digital sustainability tools

(I posted this in another community as well; I hope that's not against guidelines.) Hi all, I'm looking for cities that aggregate envrironmental data from open...

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I't note sure this meets your needs, but you may find this method of interest:

From PLOS ONE: https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249715

 

 

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