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
- @StephODonnell
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WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
I'm the Executive Manager at WILDLABS.
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University of Salford
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- @capreolus
- | he/him
Capreolus e.U.
wildlife biologist with capreolus.at
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- @ryanhuang
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Conservation scientist based in Pretoria, South Africa
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- @Rob_Appleby
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Wild Spy
Whilst I love everything about WILDLABS and the conservation tech community I am mostly here for the badges!!
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Neuroscientist & engineer looking for a data/R&D role in conservation.
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- @carlybatist
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WildMon
Science Outreach Lead at WildMon; ecoacoustics, biodiversity monitoring, nature tech
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- @lampros
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I am a Data and Remote Sensing Analyst specializing in programming (R, Python) at Monopteryx, contributor to open-source projects related to machine-, deep-learning, remote sensing and interested in Biodiversity
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- @hyodopenguin
- | she/her
I am currently a rising junior at UC Berkeley studying data science. I hope to apply data with biodiversity, especially by utilizing camera traps for species classification. People in conservation tech are truly living my dream careers, and I can't wait to get even more inspired!
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Worked as a mechanical engineer for a defence co, then software engineer, then for a research lab specialising in underwater robotics.
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World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
WWF-Tanzania GIS Specialist/Developer/Trainer
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- @Slater
- | he/him
I am the Conservation Science Director at HawkWatch International, where I've worked since 2006. My work focuses mainly on conservation and research of Golden Eagles, including nesting, tracking, and winter ecology.
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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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July 2024
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April 2024
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi all, Firstly, I'd just like to say a big thank you to everyone who attended my Tech Tutors presentation last month. And secondly, thank you for your patience in allowing... |
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Biologging, Drones | 3 years 11 months ago | |
We are happy to share that we open a worldwide-first research residency in ecosystem restoration with drones and native seeds. Do you... |
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Drones | 4 years ago | |
Hi all, There is a conversation underway in the "Ethics of conservation tech" group on best practices for responsible use of... |
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Drones | 4 years 2 months ago | |
Hi! We've been using our Mavic 2 Pro to create 3d models and volumetric assessments of mangroves. We're learning more about... |
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Drones | 4 years 3 months ago | |
Hi Ruth, Thanks for your email. Essentially the software is only an advantage if the drones are being flown at altitudes that provide a wide area and less visible detail (i.... |
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Drones | 4 years 5 months ago | |
Hi everyone! We are very excited to announce that the BIRDSAI dataset for conservation drones is now publicly available at https://sites.... |
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Drones | 4 years 5 months ago | |
We are very excited to announce that our open-source drone-reforestation crowdfunding is LIVE! We know climate change is here,... |
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Drones | 4 years 5 months ago | |
Hello, I'm new here. I thought I would share an article that I wrote a couple of years ago about my work with using drones for... |
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Drones | 4 years 6 months ago | |
Hi everyone, I have a LIDAR sensor (LIDAR USA-Fagerman Technologies-Velodyne puck) and a DJI M-600 drone. I would like to use... |
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Drones | 4 years 7 months ago | |
Cheers Al, and looking forward to hearing more about them. I am, as we speak, editing some thermal videos of wallaby behaviour near roads, specifically in relation to devices... |
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Drones | 4 years 7 months ago | |
Really useful to know about that package, thanks |
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Drones | 4 years 8 months ago | |
Hi WILDLABbers! We're looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow in the drones meetup. It's on Wednesday,... |
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Drones | 4 years 8 months ago |
Machine Learning Postdoc Position, Understory
29 February 2024 11:56pm
Wildlife Drones will be hosting in-person demos in the U.S.
12 February 2024 3:32am
Passionate engineer offering funding and tech solutions pro-bono.
23 January 2024 12:06pm
2 February 2024 1:22pm
Hi Danilo. you seem very passionate about this initiative which is a good start.
It is an interesting coincidence that I am starting another project for the coral reefs in the Philipines which also requires water analytics so I can probably work on both projects at the same time.
Let's that have a call and discuss, will send you a pm with my contact details
There is a tech glitch and I don't get email notifications from here.
Using drone or other unmanned vehicle for DNA sampling on fresh elephant dung in a Baï, Congo Rainforest.
29 January 2024 9:44am
30 January 2024 10:30am
I think we can habituate elephant to noise, especially if it's could looks like a natural one.
The problem is that many elephants are concentrated in the baï and if we want to avoid DNA contamination we have to sample it quite fast.
30 January 2024 8:19pm
Hi Antoine,
I would recommend talking to the engineers at Outreach Robotics - @Gcharron .
We have been working on collecting tools for rare plants, and I would guess it wouldn't be a huge adjustment to collect elephant dung. I think the amount of dung required for analysis will drive the size of the collecting drone. Maybe the drone could be up very high to not disturb the elephants with a long line sampling mechanism?
30 January 2024 9:01pm
Forgot to mention this wildlife drone group -
Reasonable price for drone pilot (south africa)?
27 January 2023 11:20am
16 January 2024 12:21pm
Hello Stephanie,
I am not sure if you are still monitoring this thread, but if you need any information, please let me know. I have flown drones for a couple of years in Zimbabwe and South Africa in conservation and anti-poaching operations. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Regarding the £500-700 range you mentioned, it seems waaaayyyy overpriced. Those rates are usually charged by lawyers and accountants in South Africa.
If you have found the information you were seeking, I wish you all the best.
Quin
26 January 2024 10:39pm
Hi Steph,
I think everyone below has summarised it pretty well.
A couple of comments to add.
Select your pilot well - We offer drone flying services. This wasn't our intention, initially, however we have determined that there are many drone pilots, but fewer who do it really well. Having said that, we work predominantly with animal tracking equipment, not just flying straight line vectors, if this is what you are undertaking.
In Australia, fees to become a pilot are about $5,000 AUD, and a reasonable commercial drone with changeable payload capability costs around $20,000- $30,000 AUD, and then as is suggested below, there are insurance and factoring in repairs and maintenance, and of course eventual replacement costs, travel, an hourly rate as wages etc. Obviously, the day rates you have listed aren't profit, they include cost.
Paul
Wildlife Drones
28 January 2024 4:59pm
Hi, I have used a commercial company for drone work for my PhD and they were willing to give me a significant discount for research purposes. One thing to consider is that in SA a drone pilot requires a pilots license and there is quite some red tape to go through which does make it much more complex than just going out and buying a drone oneself. The price you mention seems on the high side to me but I'm not sure if that already includes the drone, sensors, flight permissions, travel of the pilot to and from your location and any other costs.
Need advice - image management and tagging
12 January 2024 7:55pm
15 January 2024 8:47pm
Interesting, Iʻll give it a shot. Looks like this could save me some time.
Thanks for the explanation @wade!
24 January 2024 5:16pm
I have no familiarity with Lightroom, but the problem you describe seems like a pretty typical data storage and look up issue. This is the kind of problem that many software engineers deal with on a daily bases. In almost every circumstance this class of problem is solved using a database.
In fact, a potentially useful analysis is that the Lightroom database is not providing the feature set you need.
It seems likely that you are not looking for a software development project, and setting up you own DB would certainly require some effort, but if this is a serious issue for your work, you hope to scale your work up, or bring many other participants into your project, it might make sense to have an information system that better fits your needs.
There are many different databases out there optimized for different sorts of things. For this I might suggest taking a look at MongoDB with GridFS for a couple of reasons.
- It looks like you meta data is in JSON format. Many DBs are JSON compatible, but Mongo is JSON native. It is especially good at storing and retrieving JSON data. Its JSON search capabilities are excellent and easy to use. It looks like you could export your data directly from Lightroom into Mongo, so it might be pretty easy actually.
- Mongo with the GridFS package is an excellent repository for arbitrarily large image files.
- It is straightforward to make a Mongo database accessible via a website.
- They are open source (in a manner of speaking) and you can run it for free.
Disclaimer: I used to work for MongoDB. I don't anymore and I have no vested interest at all, but they make a great product that would really crush this whole class of problem.
25 January 2024 8:32am
Hi!
I would take a look at
Although developed for camera trap imagery, it is by no means restricted to such.
Cheers,
Lars
Cutting edge plant conservation
9 January 2024 7:33am
9 January 2024 4:56pm
9 January 2024 7:10pm
In what ways can drones contribute to linking individuals, communities, and small-scale producers in rural areas, facilitating the support of local food value chains
15 December 2023 3:44pm
Come for the trees and geese, stay for the AI: using computer vision for urban forestry and wildlife monitoring
13 December 2023 5:58pm
Drone mapping at scale: capturing, processing, and distributing aerial imagery in Virunga National Park
13 December 2023 5:31pm
Ekobot WEAI robot - autonomous weeding at farm scale
29 November 2023 12:11am
A little off the typical path for Wildlabs - and probably not the sort of drone people typically think about here 😄 - but I find robotic agriculture very interesting, with the potential to greatly reduce use of poison and improve effective yields. Anyone working on like things?
ICOTEQ launch TAGRANGER® system of products
23 November 2023 1:25pm
AWMS Conference 2023
Catch up with The Variety Hour: November 2023
16 November 2023 12:59pm
Insight; a secure online platform designed for sharing experiences of conservation tool use.
7 November 2023 1:01pm
A secure platform designed for those working to monitor & protect natural resources. Insight facilitates sharing experience, knowledge & tools to increase efficiency & effectiveness in conservation. By sharing we reduce time & money spent to find, test, & implement solutions.
5 Trailblazing Wildlife Monitoring Tech Solutions across East Africa. What Monitoring Technologies are you using?
25 October 2023 12:40pm
Restoring the Mara Elephant Population Using Coexistence Tech Solutions with Mara Elephant Project's Wilson Sairowua
![](/sites/default/files/2023-09/CHG_0824-225x300.jpg)
20 October 2023 1:31pm
27 May 2024 3:54pm
28 May 2024 8:12am
How 3D Technologies are Reshaping Forest Ecology and Conservation
6 October 2023 1:13pm
Conservation Innovation Manager
27 September 2023 11:08pm
CIEEM 2023 Autumn Conference: Modernising Ecology: Techniques and Approaches
5 September 2023 1:59pm
Sustained Effort: Carbon Footprints and Capacity
![](/sites/default/files/sol-.jpg)
9 August 2023 10:00am
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Judges' Panel Honorees
![](/sites/default/files/2023-05/favicon%20on%20black_0.png)
4 August 2023 10:00am
Mapping seagrass with drones and AI
4 August 2023 2:00am
GeoNadir shared how drones and AI can help assess seagrass habitats at the Great Barrier Reef, as well as how satellite imagery can monitor seagrass on a wider scale.
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Community Choice Honorees
![](/sites/default/files/2023-05/favicon%20on%20black_0.png)
3 August 2023 10:00am
Workshop on the use of information and communications technology for conservation in Central Asia
1 August 2023 11:50pm
Wildlife Conservation Drones & Technologies Summit 2023
16 July 2023 10:04pm
Project Spotlight: Monitoring tropical freshwater fish in Kakadu National Park with drones, underwater cameras and AI
12 July 2023 3:40pm
12 July 2023 3:58pm
During Andrew's talk, @dmorris put out a call in the chat that might be relevant to folks catching up on the video, so I'll drop it here too:
Re: Andrew's fish work... part of the reason I got in touch with Andrew a few weeks ago is that I'm trying to keep track of public datasets and public models for marine video that have basically this gestalt (video where fish look fishy-ish). I think we're getting close to enough public data to train a general-purpose model that will work well across ecosystems. My running list of datasets is here:
https://lila.science/otherdatasets#images-marine-fish
Let me know if folks know of others!
There are also a grand total of two public models that I'm aware of that sort of fall into this category... one is Andrew's:
https://github.com/ajansenn/KakaduFishAI
The other is:
https://github.com/warplab/megafishdetector
If folks know of other publicly-available models, let me know about those too!
2023 Canon Oceania Grants - Environmental Grant AU$5,000
7 July 2023 1:47pm
Osa Conservation: A Multi-Tech Toolbox of Solutions
![](/sites/default/files/2023-06/osa.jpeg)
22 June 2023 10:42am
26 January 2024 3:18pm
Hi Krasi! Greetings from Brazil!
That's a cool journey you've started! Congratulations. And I felt like theSearchLife resonates with the work I'm involved round here. In a nutshell, I live at the heart of the largest remaining of Atlantic forest in the planet - one of the most biodiverse biomes that exist. The subregion where I live is named after and bathed by the "Rio Sagrado" (Sacred River), a magnificent water body with a very rich cultural significance to the region (it has served as a safe zone for fleeing slaves). Well, the river and the entire bioregion is currently under the threat of a truly devastating railroad project which, to say the least is planned to cut through over 100 water springs!
In face of that the local community (myself included) has been mobilizing to raise awareness of the issue and hopefully stop this madness (fueled by strong international forces). One of the ways we've been fighting this is through the seeking of the recognition of the sacred river as an entity of legal rights, who can manifest itself in court, against such threats. And to illustrate what this would look like, I've been developing this AI (LLM) powered avatar for the river, which could maybe serve as its human-relatable voice. An existing prototype of such avatar is available here. It has been fine-tuned with over 20 scientific papers on the Sacred River watershed.
And right now myself and other are mobilizing to manifest the conditions/resources to develop a next version of the avatar, which would include remote sensing capacities so the avatar is directly connected to the river and can possibly write full scientific reports on its physical properties (i.e. water quality) and the surrounding biodiversity. In fact, myself and 3 other members of the WildLabs community have just applied to the WildLabs Grant program in order to accomplish that. Hopefully the results are positive.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that our mobilization around providing an expression medium for the river has been multimodal, including the creation of a shortfilm based on theatrical mobilizations we did during a fest dedicated to the river and its surrounding more-than-human communities. You can check that out here:
Let's chat if any of that catches your interest!
Cheers!