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
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Katherine Chou, Product Lead at Google[x] Labs, sees technology as a way to make the impossible, possible. She explores differences in how wildlife NGOs and the tech sector think and plan, and what the conservation ...
22 December 2015
John Amos, President of SkyTruth, explores how remote sensing is being used in conservation today and the importance of sky-truthing. He examines the role that citizen scientists can play in increasing transparency in...
21 December 2015
New technologies offer a lot of potential for conservation, but are there potential risks to deploying these new technologies? In this first thought piece for the Ethics of Conservation Tech Group, Dr Chris Sandbrook...
2 November 2015
September 2024
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Ups, it's true :( I hope that you can try to apply anyway. Regards |
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Drones | 7 years 10 months ago | |
Anyone want to work on Elephants (in natural habitat) ? At Pah Muang Wildlife Sanctuary (along to road Chiang Mai to Lampang) there are... |
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Drones | 7 years 10 months ago | |
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... |
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Drones | 7 years 11 months ago | |
For anyone interested in an overview of how drones are being deployed for conservation, this piece by Serge Wich (of ConservationDrones.org) provides a... |
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Drones | 8 years ago | |
In April, the Cambridge Conservation Tech Group held its second meetup, which brought together colleagues from RSPB, Birdlife, FFI,... |
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Drones | 8 years 2 months ago | |
Interesting. A case in point is the viral video making the rounds about drone fishing: We've seen an array of inventive uses for drones of late across a whole range... |
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Drones | 8 years 3 months ago | |
I agree that it is likely that a dirigible would probably struggle in a lot of common mapping settings. People do use kites though. If you are interested in developing the flight... |
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Drones | 8 years 3 months ago | |
Hi Lot, great to see you here too. |
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Drones | 8 years 4 months ago | |
Hi Sean, Thanks for sharing your survey - is there a specific date you'll be closing the survey? It'd be great if you could share the results of the... |
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Drones | 8 years 4 months ago | |
Hi Daniel Thanks for the interest in the project. The load carrying capacity will be a few kgs. The battery I've sized at this stage is around 2kgs and should allow it... |
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Drones | 8 years 4 months ago | |
http://www.esri.com/products/drone2map#beta ESRI is developing the means of putting UAV imagery into ArcGIS. Sign up to keep... |
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Drones | 8 years 5 months ago | |
These two fully funded PhD positions may be of interest to the community: Primate Conservation And UAV Technology:... |
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Drones | 8 years 6 months ago |
Community Choice Award Winners: #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge
15 August 2024 2:41am
Global model for Livestock detection in airborne imagery - Data, Applications, and Needs
12 August 2024 8:19pm
14 August 2024 7:10pm
Thanks, I grabbed those datasets already. I know about that website, put couldn't quite make sense of it. It says 'open repository', but then there is a login page with no way to request to join as far as I can tell.
Cast your vote in the #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge Community Choice Awards!
12 August 2024 1:46pm
12 August 2024 9:15pm
13 August 2024 11:26am
Open Source Photogrammetry Software
15 June 2022 9:43pm
28 June 2022 10:21am
Hi Lindy, ODM has a steep learning curve but is fantastic once you understand it. I have much better results than from commerical services, although we were just stitching fairly small (<10ha) areas.
Have a look at WebODM Lightning, this is a paid-for, but very cheap, processing service using ODM that is more similar to commercial services (upload your images, press go). You can upload using the web interface or a Windows app.
7 February 2023 11:39am
Hi Lindy,
WebODM has now a native Windows installer version which costs around 147 $ once - https://opendronemap.org/webodm/download/.
Is has almost all the advantages of the high priced softwares and even presets for some use cases.
Best regards!
Steffen
9 August 2024 1:18pm
RealityCapture is now free to use for students, educators, and hobbyists and for companies making less than $1 million USD/year.
Best regards!
Steffen
Drones for GIS Best practice Document
31 March 2020 10:42am
12 May 2020 1:14pm
We hope to devlop a fourm on the CSG website people can go to for information ant to contribute. We are hoping networking will be able to help everyone.
27 November 2023 6:14pm
The link above does not seem to work but this does: https://wildlabs.net/sites/default/files/community/files/drones_for_gis_-_best_practice_v2.0.pdf
9 August 2024 1:09pm
Hi Nilaksha,
maybe this is interesting too 😉 My free manual 'Drones in Biomonitoring' - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8077113 can help to get (more) knowledge how to proceed easily and successfully 😉
It covers topics from buy to fly and data processing.
📖 The manual was developed to help authorities, landscape conservation / maintenance or nature conservation associations etc. in nature conservation to manage their growing monitoring tasks more effectively and cost-efficiently.
🛸 The use of drones can contribute in many ways to increasing the effectiveness of monitoring, reducing costs and minimizing disturbance - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen-Doering.
Best regards!
Steffen
Seeking Advice on Thermal Drones for Night-Time Elephant Observation
25 December 2023 9:53am
16 February 2024 8:34am
@PaulAllin Thanks for your valuable insights. Zenmuse H20N seems to be very powerful and useful in this case. However, I'm looking for a more affordable option for a self-funded research.
9 August 2024 12:55pm
Hi Nilaksha,
maybe it helps 😉 My free manual 'Drones in Biomonitoring' - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8077113 can help to get (more) knowledge how to proceed easily and successfully 😉
It covers topics from buy to fly and data processing.
📖 The manual was developed to help authorities, landscape conservation / maintenance or nature conservation associations etc. in nature conservation to manage their growing monitoring tasks more effectively and cost-efficiently.
🛸 The use of drones can contribute in many ways to increasing the effectiveness of monitoring, reducing costs and minimizing disturbance - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen-Doering.
Best regards!
Steffen
9 August 2024 12:58pm
Ah, and perhaps have a look at conservationdrone.org 😉
Drones for IUU (illegal fishing activities & vessel monitoring)
20 March 2023 6:00am
11 April 2023 5:48am
Hi Frank! Thanks so much for your reply. Yes I have been looking into the same sort of workflow as with camera traps etc and seem to be getting somewhere (although am yet to have my own data set with which to check!).
Yes, with the transponder issue, actually NONE of the boats here have them! There has been a push to get boats to install them further down the coast, but it was marred by the usual corruption and forceless enforcement. So everything will be visual, rather than working on any signal given out by the boats themselves. I am looking into ai programs that can analyse footage and as you say, it can be done with species so I see no reason it cannot be done with vessels given the parameters to look for
14 April 2023 12:57am
Seeing the pictures that @lmccaskill uploaded got my brain storming, so to say. Are you working with similar small boats? I was assuming bigger fishing ships that are registered somewhere. If the boats are not registered and there are no existing photos of them, and you want to identify the individual boats, you'll need to build your own catalogue to train an AI.
However / in addition, if the boats have written text on them with a name or a code or number, like in the pictures, then it should be ridiculously easy to identify boats. No AI needed. I discovered recently that my laptop has started showing find results based on text in photos. If different boats are of the same model, again like in the pictures, then there is nothing else left than what is written on them ... well, perhaps the color scheme.
... or perhaps face recognition if the image quality allows it. But then you'll be at square 1 again with training an AI.
9 August 2024 12:48pm
Hi all,
maybe it helps 😉 My free manual 'Drones in Biomonitoring' - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8077113 can help to get (more) knowledge how to proceed easily and successfully 😉 It covers topics from buy to fly and data processing.
📖 The manual was developed to help authorities, landscape conservation / maintenance or nature conservation associations etc. in nature conservation to manage their growing monitoring tasks more effectively and cost-efficiently.
🛸 The use of drones can contribute in many ways to increasing the effectiveness of monitoring, reducing costs and minimizing disturbance - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen-Doering.
Best regards!
Steffen
Selecting a thermal imaging drone for wildlife monitoring
24 July 2023 4:52am
26 August 2023 1:09am
We have recently applied funding for one of these to find bird nests on the tundra in Greenland.
29 August 2023 12:42pm
Hi Doug,
we are a young startup that uses AI as a tool in nature and wildlife conservation. At the moment we develop a drone with on-board AI (for object detection) and thermal and "normal" camera. If you want to know more about the project, you can contact me [email protected]. I would be happy to help you.
9 August 2024 12:45pm
Hi all,
maybe it helps 😉 My free manual 'Drones in Biomonitoring' - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8077113 can help to get (more) knowledge how to proceed easily and successfully 😉
📖 The manual was developed to help authorities, landscape conservation / maintenance or nature conservation associations etc. in nature conservation to manage their growing monitoring tasks more effectively and cost-efficiently.
🛸 The use of drones can contribute in many ways to increasing the effectiveness of monitoring, reducing costs and minimizing disturbance - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steffen-Doering.
Best regards!
Steffen
Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic Radar
7 January 2024 6:50am
14 July 2024 9:54am
Hi Heinrich, you are absolutely right about the need for long-endurance drone for such a mission on 250km^2.
Taking a full frame 35mm camera with a 35mm (wide angle) lens you would have a field of view of 123 metres x 83 metres (looking straight down, you want to be looking at an angle and doing this in high contrast lighting, preferably with the sun behind the camera).
If the area was a square 15.8km x15.8km you would need to do 16 km / 123m = 128 transects to cover the area which is 16km x 128 = 2,057km which if flying at 135 km (safe speed for game counting in a high wing Cessna 182) is 15.23 hours of flying.
Endurance and speed in commercially available drones - is what is stopping drones from realising their conservation potential.
Attached is initial (conservative) design performance details.
Contact me on +27 72 472 5318 and we can discuss this further.
31 July 2024 4:30pm
there is this one too:
31 July 2024 6:22pm
Great!!!
19th Australasian Vertebrate Pest Conference 2024
12 July 2024 12:42am
ForestSAT
5 July 2024 7:04pm
Handbook 'Drones in Biomonitoring & Nature Conservation'
27 June 2024 9:29pm
Handbook 'Drones in Biomonitoring & Nature Conservation'
27 June 2024 9:16pm
The use of drones can contribute in various ways to increase the effectiveness of monitoring, reduce costs, and minimize disturbances.
This manual has been developed to support conservation efforts and to help make the growing monitoring tasks more effective and cost-efficient.
Enter to win a free thermal camera!
26 June 2024 5:38pm
Case Study: Drone-based radio-tracking of Eastern Bandicoots
14 June 2024 3:53am
Fully funded PhD in AI biodiversity monitoring
11 June 2024 1:07pm
New WILDLABS Funding & Finance group
5 June 2024 3:24pm
5 June 2024 4:14pm
6 June 2024 1:38am
6 June 2024 4:16am
Apply! 2024 Conservation Tech Award
3 June 2024 3:51pm
Share Your Work in a Conservation Technology Video
17 May 2024 9:06pm
Using drones and camtraps to find sloths in the canopy
18 July 2023 7:39pm
3 May 2024 6:48pm
Thank you for the tip, Eve! In fact, in the area where the foundation works, there clearly are dry seasons, the past few years much drier than normal, where trees loose their leaves a lot.
6 May 2024 4:29pm
Yes, if the canopy is sparse enough, you can see through the canopy with TIR what you cannot see in the RGB. We had tested with large mammals like rhinos and elephants that we could not see at all with the RGB under a semi-sparse canopy but were very clearly visible in TIR. It was actually quite surprising how easily we could detect the mammals under the canopy. It's likely similar for mid-sized mammals that live in the canopy that those drier seasons will be much easier to detect, although we did not test small mammals for visibility through the seasons. Other research has and there are a number of studies on primates now.
I did quite a bit of flying above the canopy, and did not have many problems. It's just a matter of always flying bit higher than the canopy. There are built in crash avoidance mechanisms in the drones themselves for safety so they do not crash, although they do get confused with a very brancy understory. They often miss smaller branches.If you look in the specifications of the particular UAV you will see they do not perform well with certain understories, so there is a chance of crashing. The same with telephone wires or other infrastructure that you have to be careful about.
Also, it's good practice to always be able to see the drone, line-of-sight, which is actually a requirement for flight operations in many countries. Although you may be able to get around it by being in a tower or being in an open area.
Some studies have used AI classifiers and interesting frameworks to discuss full or partial detections, sometimes it is unknown if it is the animal of interest. I would carefully plan any fieldwork around the seasons and make sure to get any of your paperwork approved well before the months of the dry season. It's going to be your best chance to detect them.
7 May 2024 1:49am
Thank you for elaborating, @evebohnett ! And for the heads ups!
Elephant Collective Behaviour Project - Principal Investigator
1 May 2024 1:59pm
The Inventory User Guide
1 May 2024 12:46pm
Introducing The Inventory!
1 May 2024 12:46pm
22 July 2024 10:55am
23 July 2024 2:05pm
23 July 2024 2:53pm
The IUCN-SSC Crocodile Specialist Group (CSG) Conference
9 April 2024 8:21am
Wildlife Drones will be at the 21st Australasian Bat Society Conference
9 April 2024 6:03am
PhD Opening: Revealing the Dynamics of Soaring Environments Through GPS and Drones
13 March 2024 2:11pm
Here's what you missed at World Wildlife Day 2024
7 March 2024 9:02pm
15 March 2024 2:42pm
12 August 2024 11:03pm
Hi @benweinstein,
An open-source detector would be great! from my point of view it would be ideal if it could be applied to Very High Resolution satellite imagery.
Maybe you are aware of this already but there seems to be a group at Missisipi State University who is putting together a platform for Aerial Wildlife Image Repository (AWIR) to promote research and storage of wildlife imagery and data (I haven't looked into it - it seems you'd need to sign up but looks potentially useful).
They have recently published a paper and their dataset is open source.
I would also suggest posting this discussion in the "Remote Sensing & GIS" and the "Drone" group.
Cheers,
Elsa