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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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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This is a reminder about the ZSL Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation journal open call for papers on RPAS (aka UAVs)...... |
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Drones | 7 years 3 months ago | |
The first WILDLABS Meetup in Cambridge, UK for 2017 comes off the back of this discussion in the drones group. Anyone who has an... |
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Drones | 7 years 3 months ago | |
Hi all, I'm currently working on a project to improve forest quality assessments using drones. We would like to get hold of... |
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Drones | 7 years 3 months ago | |
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-... |
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Drones | 7 years 4 months ago | |
The Parrot/Pix4D Climate innovation grant consists of an award of hardware and software for field research to foster innovation in... |
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Drones | 7 years 5 months ago | |
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... |
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Drones | 7 years 5 months ago | |
Colleagues at WWF are working with US agencies in the Northern Great Plains to pilot drones for plague vaccine delivery in... |
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Drones | 7 years 6 months ago | |
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! ;)... |
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Drones | 7 years 7 months ago | |
It takes a serious threat to convince the National Park Service to allow drones in its airspace, and for Puuhonua O Honaunau that was the... |
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Drones | 7 years 7 months ago | |
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... |
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Drones | 7 years 7 months ago | |
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... |
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Drones | 7 years 7 months ago | |
Ups, it's true :( I hope that you can try to apply anyway. Regards |
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Drones | 7 years 7 months ago |
The 59th Annual Meeting of Illinois Chapter of The Wildlife Society
12 April 2023 5:24am
Advice on afforable LiDAR scanners for Amazon forest surveys
5 April 2023 3:47pm
Exploring storage options for mass data collection
22 March 2023 3:20am
22 March 2023 7:36pm
Hi Adam!
I mostly live within the ecoacoustics space so I'll just speak on the hydrophone part of your request; Arbimon is a free web/cloud-based platform with unlimited storage for audio files. We've got an uploader app as well for mass-uploading lots of files. There's also a bunch of spectrogram visualization/annotation tools and analysis workflows available. It's AWS running under the hood.
I have some experience working directly with AWS & Microsoft Azure, and I've found personally that AWS was more user-friendly and intuitive for the (fairly simplistic) kinds of tasks I've done.
27 March 2023 5:23am
Synergistic use of UAV surveys, satellite tracking data, and mark-recapture to estimate abundance of elusive species
21 March 2023 5:21pm
We used a combination of high-resolution satellite tracking (Fastloc-GPS), uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) surveys, and capture-mark-recapture approaches to assess the abundance of immature hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in a tidal lagoon of the Chagos Archipelago (Indian Ocean).
Wildlife Conservation Drones & Technologies Summit 2023
16 March 2023 11:31am
30 March 2023 4:15pm
12 April 2023 5:18am
15 April 2023 3:26pm
Computer Science student looking to work for wildlife
5 March 2023 10:04pm
14 March 2023 2:00pm
Great information! Thank you for sharing this. I actually have Masters in Zoology and have done some field work in Marine Conservation. Since then I have worked in Science education and eventually switched to Software Programming. My dream has always been to work in Conservation, however life happened and I had to give up on this pipe dream. I currently work as a Developer in a contractor role for the Federal Government. Would someone with my experience have an advantage in conservation Tech?
14 March 2023 2:58pm
I think the real demand in conservation tech is for transdisciplianry individuals. If you look at all the stand-out people in this space they are people who occupy multiple domains that are traditionally isolated. These are people who talk fluently in computer science and ecology, for example. Not only this, they are also people who create and imagine in ways that intertwin ideas and concepts across these domains. Its these people, thinking in these ways, that lead to innovations that really move us forward. Some of these people started out where you are now, having crossed domains through their career and then seeing opportunities to bring these skills together in imaginative ways.
14 March 2023 9:53pm
I couldn't agree more with both of these comments tom! I'm reading hundreds (literally hundreds) of applications for open WILDLABS roles at the moment, and the ones that stand out are those where it's really clear they're following genuine curiosity across different disciplines. If you're in conservation, it's the evidence of interest in tech (courses, projects, things you're trying and learning yourself). For tech, it's getting into conservation - all the things you mentioned.
Top 5 things you need to do before flying your drone: A guide for beginners
14 March 2023 7:26pm
Proposals wanted for Innovation in Practice
6 March 2023 10:34pm
Drones for GIS - Best Practice
17 October 2017 8:22am
31 March 2020 10:38am
We've just created a new version. General updates throughout
version notes
General refresh and update based on knowledge acquired over the last couple of years
Checked links
Updated CAA regulations, drone model advice including Yuneec, sensor advice (including thermal), classification advice, hydrological modelling advice, and nest survey info
15 February 2023 9:39am
This thread continues to be one of the most useful, evergreen resources - even 5+ years later! Who would have thought?
I was speaking to a colleague from another conservation ngo last week - and it came out that she was having to start from scratch developing some consistent internal guidance to support staff members using drones. I've poiinted her here and it's already been super useful, but I'm curious if anyone has newer guidance they've developed to support drone use their organisation that they'd be able to share? If you've updated your guidance, what have you changed or found to be most important?
Reinvigorating this thread might turn out to be super useful for lots of folk and save a lot of time in developing supporting documentation - I appreciate anyone who is able to share!
Thanks
Steph
24 February 2023 12:30pm
Hi all,
I've been quickly developing in-house drone services in the UK for Providence Ecological and have found some useful information for building a workflow with Rich Charpentier's YouTube channel. There are loads of good resources on YouTube but Rich's channel seems to be more useful with regard to budget/free software etc.
It has occurred to me that there may not be very good "Best Practice" guidance for drone pilots with regard to wildlife disturbance so when considering employing a drone pilot, please bear this in mind. It is useful to talk through their experience of avoiding/mitigating disturbance to wildlife during drone operations asnd provide guidance where you feel it is required.
Hopefully this is helpful!
Using drones and camera trapping to track New Hampshire’s moose populations
22 February 2023 9:38pm
Interesting article that links to research on how technology has made studying moose populations easier, with particularly good explanation of what makes moose populations difficult to track.
Texas Chapter of The Wildlife Society’s Annual Meeting 2023
20 February 2023 10:56pm
Recommendations needed: UAV controlled via 4G or 5G and capable of carrying a heat camera?
16 February 2023 3:39pm
Postdoctoral fellowship in drone-assisted collection of environmental DNA.
12 February 2023 4:01pm
Call for Data: A Global Database of Tree Crown Footprints from RGB Imagery
3 February 2023 11:22am
3 February 2023 7:01pm
You should definitely talk with Ben Weinstein and co (the folks behind DeepForest), if you haven't already!
10 February 2023 4:18pm
Bluesky have a commercial tree crown dataset available covering most of Great Britain (England, Wales and parts of Scotland). There is a canopy layer with approximate outlines of each canopy (the image on this page shows just circular crowns). It's created using aerial imagery.
How daredevil drones find nearly extinct plants hiding in cliffs
10 February 2023 11:07am
Nice article about one of the Rainforest XPrize semifinalist teams - using drones to sample plant species. 'Nyberg and the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) team, working with the State of Hawaii's Division of Forestry and Wildlife, have rediscovered three species thought to be extinct or locally extinct from Kauai and uncovered larger populations of many other critically endangered species with populations smaller than 100 individuals.'
Open Source Photogrammetry Software
15 June 2022 9:43pm
18 June 2022 8:45pm
You might check out what's listed in the Directory - for example, DroneMapper, though this is paid (not sure if they'd give you any discount). The one I have heard most about is OpenDroneMap though. Or perhaps check out GeoNadir?
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
Consultancy opportunity: Wildlife monitoring specialist
31 January 2023 11:26am
Western Section of The Wildlife Society 2023
25 January 2023 2:09am
Interview for Technologies in Conservation
24 November 2022 10:07am
16 January 2023 2:42pm
I'd be happy to chat with you if you wanted! My expertise is within passive acoustic monitoring particularly. The Conservation Tech Directory might be useful for you in identifying relevant actors within the space.
16 January 2023 5:16pm
Happy to contribute [email protected]
17 January 2023 5:12pm
My original background is in ecology and conservation, and am now in the elected leadership of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware which convenes researchers developing open source tech for science. I am not working on a specific piece of technology right now, but am happy to contribute some higher-level views for your interview if that helps.
International Congress for Conservation Biology
16 January 2023 2:53pm
Conservation Technology Intern (Vietnam)
11 January 2023 5:00pm
Crowdfunding Aerial Baseline Study of Ghost Gear in Koh Phangan, Thailand
18 December 2022 11:06am
We are developing a project in Thailand, using drones to locate lost & discarded fishing gear across Koh Phangan, Thailand.
We're 86% there & only need $1500 to get us over the line. If you can help us, we would really appreciate it!
This project uses drones to create a baseline survey of lost fishing gear & document effects of entanglement on marine species.
We are working with Core Sea & Koh Phangan Sea Guardians to develop a locally led method for ongoing monitoring for discarded fishing gear, using drones.
Thank you, Sol, Tania & Kat
12 PhD Positions - WildDrone
1 December 2022 4:45pm
Picking up signal of GPS tag
10 November 2022 11:29am
16 November 2022 10:54am
Thanks Carly! I've been in awe of what Wildlife Drones is doing, but as you say my work at the moment is focussed on existing GPS units rather than telemetry for tracking. I'll still reach out & ask though. Thanks for your help! :)
16 November 2022 10:55am
Hi Kim! Thanks for sharing, this is really interesting! I'll check out the website & see what I can find out about the mechanics of the device. Thanks again!
21 November 2022 5:25pm
Hey Sol,
The only way for you to collect information from a GPS tag attached to a FAD is if that tag transmits that data to the drone. Unfortunately most receiver packages are a bit too large for hobbyist-style drones (from what I've seen).
Depending on the range/distance from shore, you might be able to have a shore-based receiver system?
Shark Lab Data Analyst
24 October 2022 7:12pm
New conservation tech articles from Mongabay
20 October 2022 7:45pm
Conservation Technology Intern (Vietnam)
19 October 2022 9:22am
Frontiers Symposium: Digital tools for reversing environmental degradation
5 October 2022 10:23am
6 April 2023 6:21pm
Hi Jeremy,
With a quick search I've found the paper linked below. It looks like equipments such as Livox MID are sufficient for plot-level analyses, but not for individual trees. Also, it has performed worse in dense canopies and broadleaf forest, thus I believe we won't have a technology capable of doing what you aim for this amount of money (< $1000) in a few years from now.
I hope someone give us an alternative, though. :D
Best,