In recent years, drone technologies have been explored for a range of applications in conservation including (but not limited to) mapping, biodiversity inventories, antipoaching patrols, wildlife tracking, and fire monitoring. The rise of customizable, open-source drones like those of ArduPilot and OpenROV hold promise for more effective conservation applications, and combined with other monitoring sensors and devices, they are capable of collecting high-resolution data quickly, noninvasively, and at relatively low cost.
However, challenges remain in putting these tools to use. A recent paper reviewing 256 conservation drone projects highlighted some of these major obstacles, ranging from unintended social and ecological consequences of drone operations to still prohibitive costs, both in terms of hardware and in terms of storing and processing large volumes of data. The longstanding challenge of power/battery life remains as well.
If you're considering trying out drones for yourself, and want to explore the possibilities and understand the major conversations happening around this technology, check out these beginner's resources and conversations from across the WILDLABS platform:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Conservation Technology User Guidelines Issue 5: Drones, World Wildlife Fund | Drones, best practices, ethics, regulations, case studies
- WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Recording: Drones, Craig Elder, Dr. Claire Burke, and Gabriel Levin | Drones, thermal camera, wildlife crime, ML, biologging
- New Paper: Drones and Bornean Orangutan Distribution, Sol Milne | Drones, data analysis, citizen science, community science, primates
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- Curious about radio-tracking with drones? | Wildlife Drones, Biologging (5 replies)
- Drones for GIS Best practice Document | Adrian Hughes, Drones (10 replies)
- WWF Conservation Technology Series: Drones in Conservation | Aurélie Shapiro, Drones (7 replies)
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- How do I use a drone to capture radio-tracking data? | Debbie Saunders, Tech Tutors
- How do I choose the right drone for my conservation goals? | Shashank Srinivasan, Tech Tutors
- How do I strategically allocate drones for conservation? | Elizabeth Bondi, Tech Tutors
Want to know more about using drones, and learn from experts in the WILDLABS community? Make sure you join the conversation in our Drones group!
*Header photo: Parker Levinson, Point Blue Conservation Science
Partner in Conservation at WWF
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PhD student at UC Davis studying gorilla communication & movement
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Graduate Research Assistant at SDSU, Conservation officer for Department of Forest and Park Services, Bhutan. Works on carnivores, applied quantitative ecologist
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Data has been my passion and i enjoy working with data while bringing value to the business. Data engineer with 7+ years of experience Eager to support with expert analytical skills to advance the companys business operations and strategic initiative.
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- @DanielHugelmann
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Hi, I'm the co-founder of OceanLabs Seychelles. We design and build environmental and marine remote sensing devices for conservation NGOs. As an engineer and avid diver, with a love for the environment, connecting conservation and technology was the natural thing to do!
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- @DBayley
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Fauna & Flora & University College London (UCL)
I'm a tropical marine ecologist, specialising in coral reefs, MPAs, and blue carbon. Within conservation technology my focus has been around developing underwater imaging techniques, primarily to assist coral reef monitoring
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Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
I study movement, behaviour and/or physiology using combine various sensors and tracking techniques. My focus is marine predators. However, my interest extends through the entire food web in all types of environment.
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Technology for Wildlife Foundation
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I am a budding engineer doing Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering and I am passionate about innovation and technology and how I can use it to make an impact in society.
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New paper in Journal of Animal Ecology
24 March 2023
Discover how drones are revolutionising conservation efforts and learn five essential tips to fly responsibly and minimise harm to wildlife, humans, and the environment.
14 March 2023
The Innovation in Practice edition of Methods in Ecology and Evolution is still seeking proposals about conservation technology
6 March 2023
The Environmental Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich welcomes applications for a postdoctoral fellowship on robotics methods for the collection of environmental DNA to automate monitoring of biodiversity in terrestrial...
12 February 2023
Consultancy opportunity at ZSL for an experienced monitoring specialist to support species monitoring in rewilding landscapes across Europe
31 January 2023
WILDLABS and Fauna & Flora International are seeking an early career Vietnamese conservationist for 12-month paid internship position to grow and support the Southeast Asia regional community in our global...
11 January 2023
Careers
The WildDrone team are looking for 12 PhD candidates to join the "WildDrone - Autonomous Drones for Nature Conservation Missions" Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network
1 December 2022
Careers
This position (at California State University, Long Beach) provides data management & analysis support to Shark Lab research operations including shark tagging, active tracking, receiver data, AUV & UAV data...
24 October 2022
Five articles that include conservation tech published at Mongabay
20 October 2022
*New closing date!* WILDLABS and Fauna & Flora International are seeking an early career conservationist for 12-month paid internship position to grow and support the Southeast Asia regional community in our global...
19 October 2022
Careers
The Senior Conservation Technology Specialist will be responsible for providing technical advice and capacity development to GWP project teams on conservation technology, distilling challenges and lessons from project...
22 September 2022
This technology was recently tested in Kauai, Hawaii, with the National Tropical Botanical Garden and has successfully collected from 5 critically endangered species that were otherwise inaccessible.
16 September 2022
October 2023
August 2023
event
July 2023
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Dear all, Next November 2019 I will hold a aerial sowing workshop with Drones in Brazil, in Rondonopolis, in collaboration with the... |
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Drones | 4 years 9 months ago | |
Hello everyone, I am applying to a call to create an online ecological restoration platform that incorporates drone images to facilitate... |
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Drones | 4 years 9 months ago | |
It is indeed. You can watch it here: https://consbio.org/products/webinars/scgis-webinar-promises-and-pitfalls-conservation-drones I'll also see if we can add it... |
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Drones | 4 years 9 months ago | |
Hi everyone, I am selling a drone and 3 sensors... The drone is a 178 WingCopter Heavylift :https://wingcopter.com/technology/... |
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Drones | 5 years ago | |
Thank you for the tip! Shall try and pick up a set soon. |
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Drones | 5 years ago | |
Hi Sophie, Sorry- I only just saw your reply! It took about 3 months to get it through the department of civil aviation, but this doesn't mean much, because the... |
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Drones | 5 years ago | |
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/01/drones-and-thermal-cameras-help-detect-cryptic-species/ |
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Drones | 5 years 4 months ago | |
If you need a piece of exposed (black) film then please get in touch. I still take "real" slides and have a few black frames at start and end of each roll of film.... |
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Drones | 5 years 6 months ago | |
We are starting a new drones project at the RSPB to looks at multispectral cameras. I would love to hear about any experience people... |
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Drones | 5 years 8 months ago | |
Hi Michael! Thanks so much for following up. I have yet to really get my feet wet with drones & algal blooms (my water quality issue of interest at the moment), but... |
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Drones | 5 years 11 months ago | |
hi Stephen, Kites have gimbals too (ranging from simple strings to metal rigs) and you can connect to a camera much like a drone. In my case I have a gimbal... |
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Drones | 6 years 1 month ago | |
Hi Chris, Your project sounds interesting! How's it coming along? I'm based in the SF Bay Area. I don't have much drone experience, but it's something... |
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[ARCHIVE] Funding Opportunity: Leverage space technology for wildlife protection
6 July 2017 12:58pm
[ARCHIVE] OpenAerialMap
19 June 2017 10:54am
Best Practice for Using Drones for Conservation: Let's create a living guidelines document
3 February 2017 10:13am
3 April 2017 8:45am
There's also GitLab. Again, it's probably not perfect as it's designed for coding, but I'm currently using it with a conference organising committee.
3 April 2017 9:44am
I personally think a wiki would be best.
23 June 2017 5:23pm
People in this thread might be interested in this special issue of remote sensing in ecology and conservation, looking for papers on "New Approaches to Citizen Science". Submissions close 15th July
http://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2056-3485/journal-menu/call-for-papers.html
OpenDroneMap
3 April 2017 9:24am
8 April 2017 5:56pm
Hi Thomas,
I tested it with some success, Pix4D offers more quality but ODM is doing the job quite well.
Since the process is quite demanding I will recomend you to execute ODM nativelly without virtual machine.
Maybe you can go directly for webODM:
https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/WebODM
19 June 2017 10:51am
Thanks @Lot ; I did try looking at WebODM but I even found this to be quite a convoluted process to get running. I've just volunteered as a tester for a new Windows one-click install for WebODM, so I'll take a look this week and feed back on this thread.
19 June 2017 11:20am
Cool! Thanks @Tomas Starnes.
Meanwhile, http://precisionmapper.com/ has adopted the freemium model, so the first 60 maps by year are free, It's not open source but its free. I tried and works well, the 2d maps are perfect, the 3D digital model of terrain it's not the best but it's ok.
Ground Control Points
19 May 2017 2:49pm
30 May 2017 8:47am
Hey @ahughes_rspb , thanks for starting this thread! It would be really useful to share experience on GCPs in particular. We're about to start experimenting by processing images with and without GCPs, but I expect that others are ahead of us with this. I'm particularly interested in point 4 - how much to GCPs affect the vertical accuracy of DSMs? Any advice?
From the Field: Eric Becker and designing sensors for wildlife
22 May 2017 12:00am
UAV for surveying river dolphins in the Amazon
14 February 2017 5:40pm
7 April 2017 4:00pm
Many thanks Tom. Your tips were very useful.
Have a look on the video with subtitles.
https://vimeo.com/208864580
By the way, conservationdrones is a partner and will work on the algorithm.
Cheers
7 April 2017 4:04pm
Many thanks indeed.
Please have a look at this video: https://vimeo.com/208864580
here you can see how we are working on the project.
Cheers
26 April 2017 2:50pm
Hi Marcelo,
To improve autonomy, you'll either need less weight on your drone, better batteries, or what about a fixed wing aircraft? Look at the parrot disco - it's much cheaper than the eBee, and you can outfit it with a downward facing camera instead of the forward, though it seems from your video, the one it has is fine). Those things can fly much longer than copters.
best,
aurélie
Aerial seeding with drones
19 April 2017 1:09pm
19 April 2017 2:35pm
This is really fascinating! This could also be potentially useful as a way to distribute vaccines for wildlife and livestock!
Drone training for forestry and conservation
27 March 2017 3:33pm
27 March 2017 5:04pm
Great link, thanks for sharing!
28 March 2017 10:03am
Thanks for sharing, @Lot
Adding a little more info in case anyone was interested but didn't click through - also, earlybird tickets are still available.
WORKSHOP & TRAINING:
Drone applications in sustainable natural resource management
When: 15th to 19th May, 2017
Where: Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia
For whom: Members of forestry companies, governmental environmental institutions, non-profit organizations and university research departments, as well as students.
@TWhitten this may be of interest for Indonesia team members using drones?
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Our favourites from 2016
1 March 2017 12:00am
Operational guidance
26 January 2017 1:58pm
20 February 2017 10:47am
Hi Jane,
Thanks for sharing the work the Research Data Alliance is develooing. It sounds complementary to the guidelines our community has started collaboratively developing. You can see where these guidelines are at over here in this thread. It would be great to have your experience (and that of your colleagues) as part of these guidelines, so we invite you to come and join in that process of building out these guidelines and keeping them alive.
Thanks for sharing the invitation to join your kick off meeting in April - will that be held in Barcelona, 5-7 April, 2017? I'm keen to explore how we could align our efforts as it sounds like what you're proposing is more detailed than what we're envisaging, and with a complementary focus. I agree, it would be great to ensure the conservation community perspective is build into your plans, and WILDLABS is keen to help facilate that. At the very least, the guidelines I've mentioned above should be at a point then that they might be useful to feed into your kick off meeting. If you have any more information or specific asks as the date gets closer, please do share them here.
Cheers,
Steph
20 February 2017 12:13pm
Hi @twhitten ,
Over in the other thread looking at developing best practise user guidelines @Jeremy+Lindsell shared a doc that might very well provide the template you're looking for. The Univeristy of Exeter dronelab research group (led by Karen Anderson) has developed a template for researchers using drones to help them meet CAA operating standards.
You can download the PDF here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/suppl/10.1080/01431161.2017.1286059/suppl_file/tres_a_1286059_sm2155.pdf
And a Word version here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/suppl/10.1080/01431161.2017.1286059/suppl_file/tres_a_1286059_sm2164.docx
Thanks Jeremy!
Cheers,
Stephanie
20 February 2017 12:21pm
Hi @twhitten
The British Model Flying Association provide a specialist insurance for drone operators who are not using them as a hobby nor for commercial purposes ("aerial work"). The category is termed "data, development and demonstration" and is recognised by UK Civil Aviation Authority as a legitimate mode of opeation that doesn't fit the current binary legislation of hobby or commercial. The insurance covers worldwide liability for operation. Most other drone insurance avilable assumes you are commercial, doing "aerial work" by CAA definition, and have a formal CAA licence.
BMFA are also a good source of information about current UK Gov and EU discussions on further legistlation re drones (registering all users for eg).
Best
Jeremy
Remotely Piloted Aircraft System Applications in Conservation and Ecology
10 February 2017 12:54pm
Cambridge Meetup, 9th February 2017: Contribute to the first draft of the 'Getting Started Using Drones Guidelines'
7 February 2017 3:25pm
Data request: improving drone forest quality assessments
20 January 2017 10:57am
Using Parrot technology to save the Sequoias
12 December 2016 4:56pm
5 January 2017 12:33am
Please note that they main use is Parrot sequoia multi spectral sensor, and not specifically Parrot drones.
I think they mainly use 3DR Solo drone for make the mapping of the sequoia.
5 January 2017 10:05am
Thanks for the link, @jprobert ! Parrot Education Blog's own link also here for reference http://edu.parrot.com/blog/2016/12/06/parrot-pix4d-team-forest-canopy-biologists-study-giant-sequoias/
Parrot/Pix4D Climate innovation grant
6 December 2016 4:36pm
Experience with DJI drones?
23 March 2016 3:45pm
13 April 2016 10:32am
Hi Jprobert.
I don't have experience with DJI drones but I do have quite a bit of experience with 3DR and drones in general.
What are you using the drones for? Get in touch if you'd like some advice.
Tom
27 November 2016 11:20pm
Hi Jprobert,
I have been trying to use my Phanton 3 proffessional together with Pix4Dmapper to trial out some forest mapping in Principe Island.
if you are interested check it out the interview I give to CNN Inside Africa about how drones and 3D mapping technologies are bringing our knowledge of Principe island’s forests into the 21st Century.
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/11/07/inside-africa-sao-tome-and-principe-biosphere-b.cnn
“How Sao Tome and Principe embraced ecotourism: Sao Tome and Principe is promoting small-scale, high-end tourism, preserving the island's ecosystems so they can be enjoyed for years to come. Source: CNN”
Also If you want know more about the use of drones for conservation check the full story at FFI website:
http://www.fauna-flora.org/putting-principe-back-on-the-map-with-3d-technology/
Regards,
Felipe Spina
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipe-spina-avino-91716193
Conservation Leadership Programme 2017 Award
21 November 2016 12:00am
Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act grants via USFWS
8 November 2016 12:00am
How do Wildlife Crime Experts view Remote Sensing Technologies used to Combat Illegal Wildlife Crime?
7 November 2016 12:00am
Vaccine delivery for black footed ferret recovery
18 October 2016 5:10pm
Travelling with a drone/UK regulations
22 September 2016 4:16pm
22 September 2016 5:44pm
Hi All,
For a full list of countries and drone regulations the most up-to-date site is the wiki of uaviators:
http://wiki.uaviators.org/doku.php
Regards
22 September 2016 6:27pm
Excellent resource, thanks @Lot!
16 October 2016 6:10pm
Hi all,
First of all, sorry for this delayed response! Thanks for the info, unfortunately i did not have enough time to inform my friend, but now we know for the next time! ;)
Regards
This is why drones should be used in natural parks
14 October 2016 4:22pm
DJI Mavic Pro vs. GoPro Karma
27 September 2016 5:10pm
14 October 2016 4:18pm
I will not consider karma for conservation, the 3DR Solo instead is much more smart and open source. Ready for more tasks than just a flying camera.
Mavic of course is very small and very useful for walking on nature.
Drone teaching/research license
7 September 2016 5:47pm
5 October 2016 7:30pm
Hi all,
I'm thinking about going for my license. In doing so, I'll do a writeup of my experiences for you all so that way those of you in the United States who are interested in using drones have something to reference when going to take the exam.
(ARCHIVED) PHD position available in using drones for mapping
20 September 2016 4:34pm
21 September 2016 2:39pm
@Lenny Just saw your profile on the members section. You might be interested in this.
22 September 2016 9:49am
The application was 20th September though?
22 September 2016 5:50pm
Ups, it's true :(
I hope that you can try to apply anyway.
Regards
(ARCHIVED) Opportunity to work with elephants and drones in Thailand
22 September 2016 5:39pm
New review: Opportunities and challenges of drones for ecology
22 June 2016 12:32pm
21 August 2016 7:04pm
Unfortunately, I could not see the full article, but the executive summary makes a lot of sense. I think there might be a couple of other considerations.
1) As drones become more ubiquitous it is possible that poachers also adopt the technology.
2) Even if poachers don't adopt the technology, in some high value poaching scenarios they may be able to eavesdrop on the drone communication. Eventually some kind of security may be necessary to protect the information collected by the drones.
Overall, I think drone technology is developing at a rapid pace and will prove to be very helpful in conservation.
Analytical report on drones in conservation value.
10 December 2015 9:35pm
15 August 2016 11:31am
For anyone interested in an overview of how drones are being deployed for conservation, this piece by Serge Wich (of ConservationDrones.org) provides a comprehensive run through the possibilities.
Can Drones Live up to the Hype?
8 July 2016 12:00am
28 June 2017 5:27pm
For those who couldn't make it to the webinar, there's a recording at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0smOWFNRzuoLXpPSWREUnE2YzA/view. What do people think? Is this the future of aerial imagery data management?