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Protected Area Management Tools / Feed

Protected area management systems empower essential frontline conservationists to monitor wildlife and ecosystems in real-time. With tools like SMART, EarthRanger, and Esri's Conservation Land Management toolkit, users can collect, integrate, and display data from across landscapes to ensure that key information from the field gets to decision-makers in time to make a difference. This group is the place for new and experienced users of these tools alike to ask questions, share experiences, and work together to improve their effectiveness in critical conservation landscapes around the world. 

discussion

Global model for Livestock detection in airborne imagery - Data, Applications, and Needs

benweinstein

12 August 2024 8:19pm

Hi all,I was at a AI for ecology working group a few weeks ago and was asked to look into an airborne model for detecting livestock to assist in land-management, agriculture and...

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Elsa Carla De Grandi

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

benweinstein

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. 

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discussion

The need for specialized technology tools to enhance plant conservation

Sarah Mshanga

3 August 2024 8:31pm

Hi everyone,I've been thinking a lot about plants lately and wanted to share my thoughts. In most discussions, it seems that many conservation technology tools are primarily...

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Phil Mitchell

11 August 2024 1:21am

That's a great question! I don't have any answers but my first thought was that the detection part of the problem looks very different when you're looking for plants vs animals (no camera traps, audio recorders, etc.) and often quite hard, as you're having to discriminate species that may be difficult to identify even in hand. 

I'd love to hear more from people who are working on this!

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discussion

WILDLABS AWARDS 2024 - FinDrop: Accessible Acoustic Monitoring for Mesophotic Marine Environments

Matthew Duggan

5 April 2024 10:22pm

Hello everyone! I am honored to introduce our interdisciplinary team, which has experienced exponential growth over the past year, comprising individuals such as @...

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Liz Ferguson

7 April 2024 6:07pm

Congrats @MattyD797 and team!!! We do a lot of work in the underwater bioacoustic realm and your tool certainly seems like it would be a great instrumental addition to the community. Look forward to learning more about your project!

Liz

Matthew Duggan

10 August 2024 6:47am

This opportunity is what got me started in deep reef fishes! The grant is for predoctoral students and is due September 30, 2024!! Happy to help or collaborate with anyone interested :)



Eligibility: STRI seeks a diversity of applicants and encourages students from institutions throughout the neotropics to apply. Awards are based upon merit, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, age or condition of handicap of the applicant.

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discussion

Understanding the Application of SMART in Measuring Law Enforcement Performance in Protected Areas.

Sarah Mshanga

22 July 2024 2:25pm

Hi everyonePlease help me to understand the concept of using SMART tool in protected area management. While I know that, SMART as a comprehensive approach for protected area...

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Sarah Mshanga

24 July 2024 6:30pm

Thank you very much Carly Batist for the suggestion! I haven't reached out to the SMART folks yet, but I will. Getting contacts and case studies from them sounds very helpful to me.

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discussion

Move BON Development: Follow up discussion

Lacey Hughey

19 June 2024 12:02pm

Hey Biologging Community! We just launched a new initiative to mobilize animal tracking data in support of national and global scale conservation goals (learn more here!). If you...

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Akiba

12 July 2024 5:38am

Hi Talia! 

I feel like the topic is so broad that it might help to put some constraints around things, see what works, and then broaden those out. I have a lot of ideas regarding the data monitoring and collection side based on the other sensor and observation networks we've set up in the past. 

There may also be some potential scope to incorporate things like data collection and integrated monitoring to the Build Your Own Datalogger series where the system is updated to feed data into the observation network. 

It'd probably take a bit of discussion and coordination. Let me know if interested. I'm fine to jump on a call or discuss via email too.

CathyNj

22 July 2024 9:24pm

@cmwainaina please take a look

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article

NEW PUBLICATION ALERT!

Consolata Gathoni Gitau

17 June 2024 11:33am

One of the most thrilling moments for any researcher is seeing their hard work published for the world to see. As part of the Women in Conservation Technology (WiCT) Kenya Cohort One, we not only learnt about the use of...

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Esther Githinji

17 June 2024 12:57pm

Congratulations Consolata!!! So exciting to read this :)
Sarah Maagi

17 June 2024 7:40pm

Many congratulation Consolata for such a milestone.
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discussion

Fauna & Flora: Bridging geospatial data and people together for enhanced conservation management

Stephanie O'Donnell

17 April 2024 11:31am

Hi folks!@Chelsea_Smith from Fauna & Flora joined last month's variety hour to share more about Fauna & Flora's work with geospatial data. I invited her along as I thought...

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Aaron Kennedy

13 June 2024 8:51pm

This is amazing! Thank you for sharing. I'm speaking on this topic at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in October. If you have any other resources on this topic, let me know! Closing the loop for "Science to Action" is a huge part of the work we do so I'm always looking to learn. 

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discussion

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

Amit Kaushik

22 January 2024 11:36pm

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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Chavoux Luyt

4 February 2024 8:16am

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.

Aaron Kennedy

13 June 2024 8:58pm

Hey Amit, 

This is a great question; from our work, we've seen people do a couple of things. We've even seen people using Ring doorbell footage in urban areas as evidence. 

The best thing we've seen is matching the community needs with existing infrastructure: 

  • Are there existing cameras you can leverage, like the doorbell cameras? 
  • Can public participation monitoring service this, i.e. public submitted photos and videos? 

It also totally depends on the wildlife species you're working with, the interaction, damages, etc. If you've found any good solutions, let me know. I'd love to share that information with our clients here who have constant bear problems. 

 

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discussion

Are you attending SMART Global Congress 2024?

Adrien Pajot

22 February 2024 11:13am

Hi everybody!Are you attending SMART Global Congress 2024 in early March?I will be in Namibia for the entire duration of the congress, representing WILDLABS, and would be very...

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Adrien Pajot

20 March 2024 4:32pm

Here is a quick report of what we have learnt there: 

 

Paloma

8 June 2024 7:43am

Hey @antoineede ,

I am not sure about that yet video recordings are available or not but you can visit this: SMART Global Congress 2024 | BluePrism

May be here you will get some of the recorded videos to watch.

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article

New WILDLABS Funding & Finance group

Frank van der Most

5 June 2024 3:24pm

WildLabs will soon launch a 'Funding and Finance' group. What would be your wish list for such a group? Would you be interested in co-managing or otherwise helping out?

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Alex Rood

5 June 2024 4:14pm

This is great, Frank! @StephODonnell, maybe we can try to bring someone from #Superorganism (@tomquigley ?) or another venture company (#XPRIZE) into the fold!
Paul Edonga

6 June 2024 1:38am

I find the group to be dope, fundraising in the realm of conservation has been tough especially for emerging conservation leaders. There are no centralized grants tracking common...
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discussion

WILDLABS AWARDS 2024 - Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring (UPAM) for threatened Andean water frogs

Mauricio Akmentins

30 March 2024 3:54pm

In our project awarded with the "2024 WILDLABS Awards", we will develop the first Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring (UPAM) program to assess the conservation status and for...

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Liz Ferguson

7 April 2024 6:09pm

This is so cool @Mauricio_Akmentins - congrats and look forward to seeing your project evolve!

Herdhanu Jayanto

1 May 2024 5:17pm

Congratulations! My first hydromoth was just arrived yesterday and so excited! Looking forward for the update from your project!!!

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article

Introducing The Inventory!

Jake Burton

1 May 2024 12:46pm

The Inventory is your one-stop shop for conservation technology tools, organisations, and R&D projects. Start contributing to it now!

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Jake Burton

22 July 2024 10:55am

Hi @hjayanto ! I've given your account the ability to edit without earning the badge just to save time while we figure out why you aren't getting your Sprout Badge, so you should...
Herdhanu Jayanto

23 July 2024 2:05pm

Thank you @JakeBurton . Looks like I wasn't in community base group, instead misunderstood it was the same as thematic group. I have added our organization. Appreciate your help!
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article

The Variety Hour: 2024 Lineup

Alex Rood

22 March 2024 4:30pm

You’re invited to the WILDLABS Variety Hour, a monthly event that connects you to conservation tech's most exciting projects, research, and ideas. We can't wait to bring you a whole new season of speakers and...

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