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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

Automated Elephant-detection system

Neil Sheridan

27 October 2016 10:14pm

Hi everyone, I thought I would introduce my automated elephant-detection system, that I have been working on over the summer for the hackaday prize. It was a finalist in...

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rakeshkalva

12 June 2020 5:53am

Hi,

This is rakesh kalva from India. I have been working on human-elephant conflict in the state of Andhra Pradesh for the past 5 years. This is a cool idea. I have used camera traps to identify movement and individual elephants for demographic data. 

Some field based observations of using camera traps for elephants:

1. I usually place the camera traps on forest paths and many of the images we captured wernt of the complete elephant. Its just the legs and trunk. Wont that effect the detection by the software as to wether its an elephant or not?

2. In case of flash cameras , quite a lot of our cameras got damaged by elephants. So we were going for IR cameras. WIll it work for IR cameras as well?

3. Another issue is with the cameras being stolen by locals or poachers.

4. So we gave up all this and are using a simple trip technology with a switch attached to a door bell attached to a rope placed at a height of 7-8 feet. In this landscape no other animal is at this heigh so when the alarm is triggered we know its an elephant.

5. Elephants operate in a large territor, so will it be feasable to use this technology? 

But there are some interesting research questions that can be answered with this technology you are developing. Kindly let me know if i can be of any help on field.

 

Regards,

Rakesh Kalva

Wildlife Biologist

Juliana Masseloux

18 May 2022 3:48am

Hi Neil,

I am a project manager for Zoological Society of London's Thailand Programme. We work in the southern Western Forest Complex of Thailand, which is a large landscape of relatively contiguous forest surrounded by development and agriculture and thus rife with human-elephant conflict. We are currently looking to co-develop or pilot low-cost cameras or acoustic sensors for real-time detection of elephants at HEC hotspots within the landscape. Current issues we've been facing are high rates of non-target stimuli triggers which clog up the cloud (so the automated classification of elephants would be useful to limit notifications) and the high cost of conventional cellular camera systems. I am curious to know the current status of your Elephant AI system. The most recent update I've found on your hackaday is of the combination with a deterrence system, which is very promising. Feel free to email me at [email protected] or reply to this message.

Cheers,

Juliana

Kim Hendrikse

20 June 2023 1:32pm

What's the definition of low cost really? Using various cnn models for objection detection the results can be very accurate. The costs would vary. The cheapest Jetson Nano (Old model) is about 150 euros but case, SSD and camera and it can run yolov4 full model, 416x416 image size.

However, if you go the next step, the jetson Nano orin, then you start about 500-700 euros for the board, but the model can run a full size yolov6 model which is extremely good. Elephants are so unique looking, you could likely eliminate all false positives.

You would need to attach cellular modems or something like that I expect but these sound like a different thing to a cellular camera system that you mention and thus likely a lot cheaper.

The Jetson SBC's do use quite a lot of power.

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How lights help keep lions and livestock alive in Kenya

Esther Githinji

31 May 2023 3:31pm

Richard Turere from Kitengela, invents flashing lights to mitigate human wildlife conflict. He came up with “Lion Lights,” a system that deters predators such as lions from attacking livestock using flashing lights. Operating predominantly on solar energy, with the ability to harness wind power during cloudy weather or low sunlight, Turere’s invention provides a sustainable eco-friendly approach to conservation.

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discussion

Looking to contribute

Dannii

27 April 2023 2:41am

Hi everybody 👋🏽,I'm a UX designer, and I design interfaces and improve user experiences/flows. I would love to contribute to conservation tech / climate tech, especially saving...

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discussion

Rhino horns in medicine 

matilde stella

2 April 2023 2:22pm

Hi everyone,I'm new here :)I'm doing my thesis of biology bachelor about Rhino poaching. I wanted to ask here if yu have some articles about Lab data of the inefficiency of the...

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discussion

Moveapps: EMAC23 Coding Challenge

Andrea Koelzsch

3 March 2023 7:58am

Motivated by having been named a Conservation Tech Award grantee in 2022, we are launching the EMAC23 coding challenge to Equip MoveApps for Conservation.Pick one of five use...

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Lars Holst Hansen

3 March 2023 3:12pm

Super initiative! I hope you get a lot of entries to this coding challenge!

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Climate crisis drives a rise in human-wildlife conflicts

Ellie Warren

1 March 2023 10:51pm

New article about how climate change and human-wildlife conflict go hand-in-hand. Would be interesting to hear from our climate change and HWC groups about how climate scientists and community members who are innovating HWC tech solutions could work together collaboratively to understand and address this growing problem.

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event

AI for Forest Elephants Challenge

Tjomme Dooper

25 January 2023 3:34pm

FruitPunch AI is hosting the AI for Forest Elephants Challenge. Together with 50+ AI enthusiasts and experts from all over the globe, we will apply AI to detect gunshots and elephant rumbles on sound monitoring...

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discussion

Help - Innovative ways to track elephant movement

Tyler Nuckols

28 October 2022 4:50pm

Hi, I am working on a study to track wild elephant movement within an overlayed matrix of crop fields. We seek to understand how various landscape variables impact crop-raiding...

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Peter Apps

4 November 2022 5:24pm

Why would you want to avoid alerting the rangers ?

You don't need high tech for this; elephants leave very obvious tracks and sign. 

Kim Lane

7 November 2022 12:52am

Hi Tyler,

Would like to introduce you to Ceres Tags products

  • Ceres Tags products come in boxes of 5, 10 and 24. 
  • There are some software partners such as Earthranger, Mapipedia and possibly CiboLabs that would be able to assist you with your mapping vegetation requirements
  • Ceres Tag does not require any towers, base stations and infrastructure. This allows you to see any movements from the heard outside of their normal herd (boundary alerts), and you will not be disturbing any of the flora and fauna with infrastructure set up. 
  • For the timing you are looking at, Ceres Wild pings directly to satellite 24 times a day. For Ceres Trace and Ceres Ranch there are 4 within 24 hours. Taking into consideration, when you set up alert areas, you will get them directly to your phone/laptop via your software of choice
  • Ceres Ranch is a reusable tag that has just been launched. Use it on this project, remove the tag and then use the tag on your next project
  • The software you choose will assist with the history of your animal movements. Ceres Tag is integrated with 11 software partners and in-development with 18 software partners https://cerestag.com/pages/software-partners
  • Understanding it is a short-term project, you would be able to use Ceres Tags products without the additional expense of setting up and removing infrastructure- towers, gateways
  • With Ceres Tag, you are purchasing the box of tags and picking a suitable software to deliver the information you require. On average, a box of 10 Ceres Trace Tags, is the same as 1 LoRaWAN tower. 

 

Lars Holst Hansen

14 December 2022 10:49am

I just came across this interesting paper in which seismic monotoring of animals like elephants was mentioned. 

This is the study refered to:

Cheers,

Lars

 

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careers

Shark Lab Data Analyst

Carly Batist

24 October 2022 7:12pm

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...

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