Quick note that we've done another update last week, so the site now has 489 resources listed! The figshare link and PDF have also been updated.

Hi everyone, 

Trying to revive this conversation. Has anyone any leads on car manufacturers, foundations, NGOs, etc who support buying (or repairing) vehicles for conservation?

Thanks,

Yvan

Read more: 

• The problem with innovation challenges
• Project Rattlecam. Read more about Project Rattlecam founder Emily Taylor’s work using conservation tech with snakes on WILDLABS here.

• Individual haplotyping of whale sharks from seawater environmental DNA (June 2021)

• eDNA sampled from stream networks correlates with camera trap detection rates of terrestrial mammals

Carly's in case you missed it:

• New Species on WildMe: new wildbooks (Grouper Spotter, Salamander Wildbook), ML support now for bobcats, clouded leopards, ocelots, great white sharks, Indo-pacific humpback whales, bottlenose dolphins 

• SeaBee: establish drone-based infrastructure for scientific research in Norway (pilot training, data storage, ML algorithms, specs/data standards, etc.) 

• Reckoning with elitism & racism in conservation: Mongabay article, interview with Colleen Begg, South African conservationist

• Underwater AI detection: created by Jake Easterling of Scubotics, upload videos and ID the fish you saw! 

• Evidensia.eco: From WWF, Rainforest Alliance & iseal; effort to make credible evidence about impacts & effectiveness of market-based sustainability approaches accessible to inform policy & practice 

• CarbonPlan: non-profit that analyzes climate solutions, builds open tools/resources for evaluation & deployment of them, improving transparency & scientific integrity of carbon remocal 

• DevelopmentSeed: engineering & product company accelerating application of accessible geospatial analysis (Cloud Geo), planetary AI, etc. to make evidence-based decisions that benefit the planet 

• Remotely monitoring honeybees: Best Bees Company installs hives on commercial and residential properties (pays property owners) & use software system to monitor and record colony health, data shared with researchers

• GoodAI community: “empowering companies that use AI to help deliver on SDG’s”; online discussion boards, company directory, job board, responsible AI resources 

• Highest resolution global map released: from Impact Observatory, Esri & Microsoft AI for Earth; using Sentinel-2 imagery at 10-m resolution & image segmentation CNN (UNet)

• Brazil’s wildlife forensics initiative: Amazonas state using isotope ratio mass spec to detect geographic origin of animals (captive-bred vs wild-caught, and where in the wild), products (timber, gold, etc.)

• ConservationAI: UK ngo detecting & classifying animals, evidence of illegal activity from pictures and thermal images collected by camera traps, drones (can use 3/4G comm’s for real-time monitoring); upload data to site, models (TensorFlow automatically run them and give you analytics dashboard 

• New Analytics Lab from Conservation Science Partners (US non-profit): develop & prototype software, computational environments & data products to monitor land use, analyze ecosystems, develop climate change projections, etc. 

• eBioAtlas: from NatureMetrics & IUCN; creating global atlas of life for Earth’s rivers & wetlands using eDNA; interfaces with IUCN RedList & GBIF; freely available 

• Global Environmental Crime Tracker: from the Environmental Investigation Agency; central public database of illegal wildlife & timber activity (pulls from publicly available info, media coverage); currently for Asia, Africa & Europe

Here's one that I thought was interesting. It's unfortunately straight out of a research lab so it's not commercially available, but it would be interesting to see what the smallest or lightest device to fulfill a specific function can be made using commercially available technologies. 

Snails carrying the world’s smallest computer help solve mass extinction survivor mystery

Read more: 

• eDNA sampled from stream networks correlates with camera trap detection rates of terrestrial mammals (2020) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-90598-5

• Other related resources:

  • eBioAtlas: partnership between NatureMetrics and IUCN to rapidly create a global atlas of the world's freshwater biodiversity using  eDNA https://ebioatlas.org/

  • WILDLABS eDNA virtual meetup talks: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWcz3iwCnCqSyyZh7Wc3pbvtmJ-4CJcLt

  • Industry guidelines: https://www.naturemetrics.co.uk/2021/05/11/industry-brief-edna-to-manage-biodiversity-risk/

•  

   

  WomBot: an exploratory robot for monitoring wombat burrows: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-021-04595-4

•  

   

  SNAPSHOT USA 2019: a coordinated national camera trap survey of the United States : https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3353

• Studying Killer Whale Behaviour with Drones

  • ​Article: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/killer-whales-form-killer-friendships-new-drone-footage-suggests

  • Video: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-57486901

  • Research Paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.0617

     

Read more:

• The G.AI.A series: Artificial Intelligence and Planetary-Scale Environmental Management, @davethau: https://medium.com/g-ai-a

• Dave Thau’s talk at the WILDLABS Virtual Meetup about Big Data in Conservation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixhGqPGxtb8&list=PLWcz3iwCnCqTOdY5AGWdxcv9gczUpmvmG&index=31&t=1s  

• Annotation Interface for Data-driven Ecology (AIDE) version, Benjamin Kellenberger -https://github.com/microsoft/aerial_wildlife_detection, Paper: https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13489

• A standardisation framework for bio-logging data to advance ecological research and conservation, Sequeira et al: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13593

• Slope does not affect autonomous recorder detection shape: considerations for acoustic monitoring in forested landscapes, Shaw, Muller, and Scherer-Lorenzen, University of Freiburg: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tbio20

@carlybatist 's in Case You Missed It

• Platform to green supply chains – chocolate maker Barry Callebaut funds EcoVision’s new sat-imagery carbon map based on to help companies avoid deforestation in their supply chains (https://news.mongabay.com/2021/06/chocolate-giant-funds-high-resolution-carbon-map-to-protect-forests/)
• Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions – SalesForce, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, UNEP, EDF, WWF (https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/556706-tech-entertainment-giants-joining-environmental-groups-un-to-reduce)
• Trase platform – data-driven transparency initiative; supply chain mapping, commodity & trade sustainability assessments, accountability for environmental impacts (https://www.trase.earth/) 
• Conservation optimism! – 2 islands in the Galapagos declared invasive-rat-free thanks to grid of drone-deployed bait traps (https://www.islandconservation.org/invasive-rodents-no-longer-threaten-wildlife-seymour-norte-island-mosquera-islet/) 
• Digital Service for the Planet – 30+ conservation org’s join Environmental Policy Innovation Center to call for federal program aggregating resources currently spread out among different and pursue other AI & tech solutions (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/creating-digital-service-planet-timothy-male/) 
• SafetyNet Technologies – offering free advisory sessions to anyone in fishing industry (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzAHai4OaEEIIU7le0eiNVISD4dAJbJrF4rb1JBjA6ikdNlg/viewform)
• PalmOil.io – for businesses to identify deforestation in their supply chain and track environmental risks from suppliers (https://palmoil.io/)

Check out this update for a sneak peek at early results and more info about why this research matters. Do you agree with the trends so far? Let us know on the survey.