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Human-Wildlife Conflict / Feed

Human-wildlife conflict is a significant challenge that only grows as habitats shrink and other issues like climate change alter the natural world. Technologies like biologging gear have become essential for proactively addressing human-wildlife conflict before it escalates, and tech projects that seek to understand population ranges and behaviour can help people learn to live with wildlife as part of our own environments. If you're interested in using technology to prevent human-wildlife conflict, this group is the place for you!

discussion

Early Warning Systems (HWC) - successes/failures, recommendations? 

Hi everyone, I'm getting a lot of questions come my way about what early warning systems are available and effective -in any sort of environment. I'm keen to crowdsource some...

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Hi @Henrikcox this is very exciting news about the Sentinel. The LoRa and cell options sound really great for a lot of urban/semi-urban areas, so a big potential winner there. Does the Sentinel offer any sort of GPIO pins that could possibly be connected to something external (e.g. like a sound unit that can playback scary sounds) if a detection occurs? 

Also @StephODonnell I'd be super keen for something like a 'WILDLABS working group' or similar on this, as it such an important topic. 

Rob

Hi @Henrikcox 

I hope you are well. 

I am not sure if you may remember myself and my colleague from CLS. We had a meeting and met in-person at Earthranger last year. 

I would be very keen to discuss your current satellite limitations and suggest options based on your required outcome. Please let me know if I can assist? 

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discussion

Ai monitoring of wolves in the Netherlands

Hi,Is anyone involved in monitoring of wolves with AI object detection in the Netherlands or who would like to?The other day I went to visit someone in Meersen who was worried...

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Hi Henrik! 

We are going to do tests in the Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark during 2024 and in spring 2025. In the summer of 2025, the plan is to install a system in Northeast Greenland but I am also looking for opportunities to test it at sites with more plar bear action - like in Churchill Manitoba in fall 2025. 

The system we started with is based on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin™ NX 16GB module but we are testing it alongside a RaspberryPi 5 based system.

Cheers,

Lars

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discussion

SURAKHSYA Portal for Human-Elephant Conflict - any updates? 

Hi everyone, I'm looking into proven systems for managing human-wildlife conflict, particularly focused on early warning systems. I'm keen to hear of any examples from your...

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Ha - you're already in my thread, i've got your project in there, don't worry! 

But it's more I don't want proof of concept early R&D type projects that are just destined for a paper or a hobby project, I want to hear about projects that have some plan for usability and scaling so that other people can take and implement them. 

I think that my system is likely the closest thing you will find in terms of production ready and potential to scale as it once was a commercial system with complete over the air updates more than 10 years ago. It’s been in use by many people for more than 10 years and has used AI triggering since 2019. I’m pretty sure no other system can claim that.


So I have the system but you got me on the scalability because to do that you need funding. I don’t have the funding. If I had the funding I’d be doing it full time. But I’ve said enough now. So I’ll leave it at that.

This thread is off-topic in this conversation, so happy to continue it in the other one. However, just noting - your system is one example, but not the only one - there are certainly other early warning systems in varying stages of development, testing and roll out, and using different levels of technology (ai or otherwise). 

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discussion

Now for Wildlife

Hello community, I wanted to share some exciting updates about my ongoing conservation project for endangered species. I post this here because you have been very supportive and I...

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discussion

Lion Deterrence

Hello! We are a group of students at UC Berkeley working to design a lion deterrence system that is more affordable and cost-effective for community livestock protection and human...

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Hi @rokshanabushra 

So are you looking to replicate something like this?

https://predatorguard.com/products/predator-deterrent-light

This is, in principle at least, fairly simple, as it's really just some red LEDs and a small solar-battery power system. You could buy one of the commercial options and do a teardown (or I can do it if you like, as I'd be interested to find out exactly what they are doing). 

In lieu of that, I suspect a light-dependent resistor is probably used to control the lights coming on at night (i.e. something along these lines: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-LDR-Darkness-Sensor-Circuit-Simple-DIY/).

If you employ some sort of 'blink' or flashing protocol (you could use a 555 timer to keep the costs down), you could save quite a bit of power (compared to running the lights constantly). For example, something along these lines: https://www.instructables.com/Adjustable-SingleDual-LED-Flasher-Using-555-Timer-/ You could also add a PIR motion sensor so it only comes on when nearby motion is detected, but of course the costs of building goes up. 

There are also a few off-the-shelf flasher designs that might be cheap enough already to consider (e.g. https://www.ledsales.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=142_143&products_id=2820). This seems like a reasonably good option for low power, although I have no idea how well it actually works...You can also buy LEDs that flash by themselves (e.g. https://www.ledsales.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=148_152_159&products_id=2951).

If you think sounds might also help (e.g. human noises etc.), check out the Boombox from Freaklabs: https://freaklabs.org/technology/boombox/ and it should be possible to add 'eyes' in the form of reflectors, or, some kind of LEDs that activate at the same time as the sound. You could contact Akiba or Jacinta about it as I am sure they'd help if they can: https://freaklabs.org/about/#:~:text=providers%20including%20ARGOS.-,the%20team,-Chris%20%E2%80%98Akiba%E2%80%99%20Wang

Anyway, happy to help if I can and all the best for the project.

Cheers,

Rob

 

Hi Rokshana,

Maybe you can try this product from India called ANIDERS - 

 I think this product would help you a lot. This is their website - 

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discussion

Tools for automating image augmentation 

Does anyone know of tools to automate image augmentation and manipulation. I wish to train ML image recognition models with images in which the target animal (and false targets)...

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Hi @arky !

Thanks for your reply.

I am running into pytorch/torchvision incompatibility issues when trying to run your script.

Which versions are you using?

Best regards,

Lars

 

@Lars_Holst_Hansen  Here is the information you requested. Also run Yolov8 in multiple remote environments without any issues.  Perhaps you'll need to use a virtual environment (venv et al) or conda to remedy incompatibility issues. 

$ yolo checks
Ultralytics YOLOv8.1.4 🚀 Python-3.10.12 torch-1.13.1+cu117 CUDA:0 (Quadro T2000, 3904MiB)
Setup complete ✅ (16 CPUs, 62.5 GB RAM, 465.0/467.9 GB disk)

OS                  Linux-6.5.0-17-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35
Environment         Linux
Python              3.10.12
Install             pip
RAM                 62.54 GB
CPU                 Intel Core(TM) i7-10875H 2.30GHz
CUDA                11.7

matplotlib          ✅ 3.5.1>=3.3.0
numpy               ✅ 1.26.3>=1.22.2
opencv-python       ✅ 4.7.0.72>=4.6.0
pillow              ✅ 10.2.0>=7.1.2
pyyaml              ✅ 6.0.1>=5.3.1
requests            ✅ 2.31.0>=2.23.0
scipy               ✅ 1.11.4>=1.4.1
torch               ✅ 1.13.1>=1.8.0
torchvision         ✅ 0.14.1>=0.9.0
tqdm                ✅ 4.66.1>=4.64.0
psutil              ✅ 5.9.8
py-cpuinfo          ✅ 9.0.0
thop                ✅ 0.1.1-2209072238>=0.1.1
pandas              ✅ 1.5.3>=1.1.4
seaborn             ✅ 0.12.2>=0.11.0
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discussion

Seeking Advice on Thermal Drones for Night-Time Elephant Observation

Hi everyone,I'm looking for an affordable yet effective thermal drone to observe elephants at night in Sri Lanka, aiming to address human-elephant conflict. Has anyone used...

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Hi Nilaksha (and everyone else),

I have been looking at the application of thermal to improve the automated detection through RGB imagery. One of the large drawbacks of thermal is the lower resolution. This is impart cost but also down to basic physics, IR light has a much longer wavelength and therefore a sensor can't have as many 'pixels' on it compared to an RGB sensor. This implies that you either need a thermal camera lens with a longer focal length, which reduces the area you cover, or you need to fly much lower. The drawback of the latter is you cover much less ground per unit of time/battery and you have the potential of disturbing the animals.

I know that DJI have recently released a starlight camera combined with thermal (DJI Enterprise Zenmuse H20N). It looks very impressive but I have not yet managed to test it. Being self-funded as well I have opted for hiring in a drone company to fly for me with the state of the art equipment rather than buying and flying myself. 

Hope that helps and keen to hear how you get on!

@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. 

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discussion

Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic Radar

Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic RadarFor the last year my colleauges Prof. Mike Inggs (Radar - Electrical Engineering, Unviversity of Cape Town) and...

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Operating at 2GHz the radar penetrates vegetation so could see through canopy, but not through trunks of trees. However snares are typically set in groups, so one could maximise chance of locating all snares by carrying out a circular/spiral flight path after detection of a potential snare to locate others

Hi David,

I assume this will only work with wire (metal) snares? We often see snares made of nylon rope (used for lucern bales) in the field, which I assume will be missed by the radar?

Cheers,

Chavoux

Hi David, would love to collaborate with you on this topic. A few years ago Dr. Nick van Doormaal did his PhD on snaring with us and we ran a number of experiments on the detection of snares in a real world scenario using trained anti-poaching teams. I think it would be quite simple to replicate the study and then look at the efficacy of remote sensing vs human detection. Let me know if you are interested in chatting further!

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discussion

Conservation Technology for Human-Wildlife Conflict in Non-Protected Areas: Advice on Generating Evidence

Hello,I am interested in human-dominated landscapes around protected areas. In my case study, the local community does not get compensation because they are unable to provide...

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This is an area where my system would do very well in:



 

 

Also, as you mention areas dominated by humans, there is a high likelyhood that there will be enough power there to support this system, which provides very high performance and flexibility but it comes with a power and somewhat a cost cost.



Additionally, it's life blood comes with generating alerts and making security and evidence gathering practical and manageable, with it's flexible state management system.



Ping me offline if you would like to have a look at the system.

Hi Amit,

The most important thing is that the livestock owners contact you as soon as possible after finding the carcass. We commonly do two things if they contact us on the same day or just after the livestock was killed:

  1. Use CyberTracker (or similar software) on an Android smart phone to record all tracks, bite marks, feeding pattern and any other relevant signs of the reason for the loss with pictures and GPS coordinates. [BTW, Compensation is a big issue -- What do you do if the livestock was stolen? What do you do if a domestic animal killed the livestock? What if it died from disease or natural causes and was scavenged upon by carnivores afterwards?]
  2. In the case of most cats, they would hide the prey (or just mark it by covering it with grass or branches and urinating in the area). In this case you can put up a camera trap on the carcass to capture the animal when it returns to its kill (Reconyx is good if you can afford it - we use mostly Cuddeback with white flash). This will normally only work if the carcass is fresh (so other predators would not be able to smell it and not know where it is yet), so the camera only has to be up for 3-5 days max.

This is not really high-tech, but can be very useful to not only establish which predator was responsible (or if a predator was responsible), but also to record all the evidence for that.

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discussion

Passionate engineer offering funding and tech solutions pro-bono.

My name is Krasi Georgiev and I run an initiative focused on providing funding and tech solutions for stories with a real-world impact. The main reason is that I am passionate...

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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:



 

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/850179762



 

Let's chat if any of that catches your interest!

Cheers!

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.

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discussion

Landscape of technology solution for African lion conservation

I am currently begining to research the topic of African Lion conservation, and in particular human-lion interaction, from a technological perspective. I would like to get an...

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Hi Simon,

Thanks for your reply. I would be interested in having a chat with you and hear more about the work you are doing! Lets connect and we can try to schedule a call in the coming days.

Thank you,
Best,

Jacobo

Hi Maureen,

Thank you very much for your insights. I would definitely like to connect with you and discuss this further! I will reach out to you so we can potentially schedule a quick call and chat about this further.

Thank you,
Best regards,

Hi Jacobo,

We have launched a new tracking/logging/finding technology which you may find of interest https://www.tagranger.com/   

Based on LoRaWAN (but with yor own handheld gateway) you can communicate with your Tags in real time.  As well as requesting current GPS locations from long distances away you can also use the integrated ranging tools which give you distance to your Tag in metres when you get closer.  

Key features:

LoRaWAN (tested up to 21km line of sight) No infrastructure required, but you can also add it to your own LoRaWAN network.

UWB ranging gives distance (in metres) to the Tag up to 150m away

Hybrid Ranging combines the equivalent of a VHF pinger from a few km away (line of sight) with the UWB ranging when you get closer

Log Download remotely using UWB radio

Ultra light 39g Tag

Power Efficiency Defined by your configuration profie, 2 days to 4 years!

Let me know if you would like any further help with this.

Craig

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discussion

How are Outdoor Fire Detection Systems Adapted for Small Forest Areas, Considering the Predominance of Indoor Fire Detectors?

How are fire detection mechanisms tailored for outdoor environments, particularly in small forest areas, given that most fire and smoke detectors are designed for indoor use?

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Fire detection is a sort of broad idea.  Usually people detect the products of fire, and most often this is smoke.

Many home fire detectors in the US use a radioactive source and measure the absorption of the radiation by the air.  More smoke means more absorption.

For outdoor fire detection, PM2.5 can be a very good smoke proxy, and outdoor PM2.5 sensing is pretty accessible.

This one is very popular in my area. 

 

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discussion

Apply to Beta test Instant Detect 2.0

Hi WildLabs,ZSL is looking for Beta testers for Instant Detect 2.0. If you are a conservationist, scientist or wildlife ranger with experience working with innovative...

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Will you accept personal/hobbyist focused on conservation on their small plots of land (10-100 acres)?

I would, and know others, who would happily pay more than the official conservationists rate for the service, which could help to further subsidize the project. (Referring to your statement here: https://wildlabs.net/discussion/instant-detect-20-and-related-cost)

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discussion

Seeking Host Organisations for Travel Scholarship Application

Hi all,I'm Eva, a final year undergraduate studying Joint Honours Biology and Geography at the University of St Andrews.  I've recently joined the WildLabs community in...

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Hi Eva, 

Me and my colleagues run a small NGO based on Yogyakarta in Indonesia, although our projects are spread around the country. One of our active project is working with the movement ecology of Sunda gharials in Berbak-Sembilang National Park. One of the other is for Malayan Giant Turtle conservation using one-plan approach, which we are planning to start in situ phase. We can't give you promise about anything, but are able to be the host organization and would love to talk the opportunity!

Cheers,

Dhanu

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discussion

Thermal cameras for monitoring visitors in highly vulnerable conservation areas

Hi everybody, Im Alex González, a consultant and researcher in sustainable tourism and conservation. I'm currently consulting a conservation organisation for the development...

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Hi,



This is a really late answer but I was new to wildlabs then. I have a security appliance that uses state of the AI models and user defined polygon areas of interest that generates video alerts of intrusions in typically under a second.

Although its setup to install automatically on an NVidia AI on the edge boxes of your intentions were to monitor a great deal of cameras you could also install it on a desktop with a high end GPU for very high performance. At home I use a desktop with an rtx 2080ti and monitor around 15 cameras and a thermal imaging camera (old one).

I have also tested a high end model (yolov7) on a high end thermal imaging camera image and it works fine as well.

Thermal yolov7

Thermal imaging cameras are hellishly expensive though and I’ve found that new extremely light sensitive cameras like the HIKvision colorvu series almost obsoletes them in terms of people detection at night at a fraction of the cost.

If you are interested I’d be happy to show you a demo in a video meeting sometime if you like. I’m pretty sure it would meeting all your intrusion detection and alerting needs.

My project page is

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discussion

Master Project Collaboration/Ideas!

Hi everyone! My name is Zach Ng, and I am currently pursuing a Master's degree in Conservation and International Wildlife Trade - MSc at the University of Kent with the...

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Hi Zach,

Our organization (SEE Turtles) has a campaign working on the illegal tortoiseshell trade around the world called Too Rare To Wear. We are going to be updating our Global Tortoiseshell Report next year and one of the gaps we have in data is in China, where the illegal trade is now happening most frequently on platforms like WeChat.

We'd be interested in discussing with you if interested in how we might be able to gather some data on this trade in the country. I'm including a couple of links below about the program and the last report and will reach out by email.

-Brad 

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discussion

Instant Detect 2.0 and related cost

I am doing a research project on rhino poaching at Kruger National Park. I was impressed with the idea of Instant Detect 2.0. I do not know the cost involved with installing that...

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Hi Kaarthika, hi all,

ZSL's Instant Detect 2.0 is currently undergoing Beta testing with external partners and so is still pre-production. We therefore do not have final pricing for the system. 

Saying this, we have got a manufacturing partner fully set-up who has already completed two full build rounds of the system, one in 2020 and another in 2023. This means we actually have a very good idea of the system's build costs and what these are likely to be when we can manufacture the system in volume.

While I cannot release this pricing yet, I am confident that we will have an unparalleled proposition.

In particular, the satellite airtime package we can supply to conservationists due to the generosity of the Iridium Satellite Company means that each system can send 3,600 (25-50KB) images a month from anywhere in the world for a single fixed fee. This equates to around a 97% discount to the normal commercial rates. 

We are currently very busy fundraising so that we can make this final step to scale the system. 

If we can secure this funding, we hope to go into volume production by mid-2024.

Best wishes,

Sam

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