Software and mobile applications are equally as important to conservation technology as the hardware used in the field. Increasingly developed specifically for #tech4wildlife needs, there are mobile apps and software options designed to help with protected area management, wildlife crime reporting, and anti-poaching patrol planning, data analysis, community science, data visualization and GIS mapping, outreach and engagement, and even conservation storytelling.
Likewise, mobile games have opened up new avenues for engaging the public in conservation efforts, allowing for immersive storytelling and interactive experiences. By combining cutting-edge technology and important conservation information with a media form already familiar to the public, conservationists are finding exciting ways to make audiences feel personally invested in critical species and habitats.
Whether you're looking for software and mobile app developers to help you with your own conservation tech needs, you have questions about development, you're looking for resources, or you'd like to share your own app, software, or gaming tools, this is the group for you!
Header photo: Trevor Hebert
Article
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Kids, Drones & Science At The Water’s Edge
4 October 2017 12:00am
DAS: A Scaleable Solution For Protected Area Management
26 September 2017 12:00am
How to track and count Scarlet Macaws
15 August 2017 6:36pm
8 September 2017 6:21am
It might be worth looking at this NZ based participatory bird count - https://www.greatkererucount.nz/
I believe they based it on iNaturalist - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.inaturalist.android
8 September 2017 6:23pm
Hi, thanks jval and smarye for your ideas, I will look into it.
Anonymous SMS
3 April 2017 7:38am
13 April 2017 2:42pm
Hi Will,
We are collaborating with WCS, San Diago zoo and the Wildtrack team from last year's zoohackathon to build a similar solution to the one you describe. The solution uses Twilio and you get a full overview of the work already built here: https://devpost.com/software/wildtrack
It would be good to share requirements and see if there is a way the Wildtrack solution can work for your needs. We would love to work with you to understand your full set of requirements and see if these can be accommodated.
If this is of interest please do drop me an email at [email protected]. I will also be out in Kenya from 25th April for two weeks, so if you'd like to meet we can hopefully do this face to face.
Sophie
15 August 2017 4:50pm
Hi all
I'd be interested to hear if there were any updates on the discussion above. We @marianneteoh are looking at establishing informant networks for reporting illegal fishing and marine wildlife trade and a means of anonymous reporting would be incredibly useful.
Thanks in advance,
Kate
29 August 2017 5:27pm
Hi Kate,
At ZSL, we're continuing to work with the WildTrack team on their solution - now named SmartSkout. We've just had an article published on the Guardian about the project https://www.theguardian.com/vulcan-partner-zone/2017/aug/22/new-app-enable-citizens-report-poaching-real-time
We're currently focussed on producing the MVP for terrestrial SMART sites but we'd be very interested to hear more about your work establishing informant networks to see what potential there is for broader applications of the technology in the future. Feel free to connect with me at [email protected]
Best
Rachael
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge: Protecting songbirds with the power of citizen science
17 August 2017 12:00am
SMART at IMPAC4 in Chile - September 4-8, 2017
15 August 2017 7:30pm
Operation Ferdinand - a Predator and Livestock Conflict Prevention Video Game!
23 June 2017 7:07pm
18 July 2017 11:29am
HI Gabriela - I'm sorry I missed this. I'm excited to try it out and so awesome to see others making games for conservation.
Gautam!
11 August 2017 1:42am
Hi Gabriela, i`ll check the game. Very interesting!!
11 August 2017 9:04am
Thanks for all the interest everyone! My colleague Jaymie and I are so excited that people are checking out our game. Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!
Bird identification app needed
13 July 2017 5:52pm
19 July 2017 10:29pm
Have you already tried the Merlin Bird ID App (http://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/)? The photo ID works pretty well. You just need to take a picture of the the whole bird. For offline mode, you can download a regional "Bird Pack", such as "US: Southeast".
Regards, Ed
20 July 2017 9:06am
Dear Ed,
Excellent suggestion, thank you. We indeed need something as user-friendly as this. Right now they do not have all the right species for us (Eastern Europe/Middle East) but we could talk to them to see what is possible. Thanks again!
Fleur
20 July 2017 5:09pm
Hi Fleur,
I see now that the Merlin App bird packs are limited to North America. You could certainly contact the Cornell University Lab of Ornitology (http://www.birds.cornell.edu/) who develop the app. They may be interested in helping with such a problem.
Another option may be iNaturalist (http://www.inaturalist.org/). They have an app for logging nature observations. It is not limited to bird, but includes plants, animals, etc. They are currently adding a deep learning system to help automatically identify species from photos (currently around 10,000 species can be identified). I believe they give a top 10 possibilities. They use GPS location data from the proto or phone to provide localized suggestions. There's a demo web page here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/computer_vision_demo
According to their blog (https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/computer_vision_demo), they have integrated the computer vision module with their iPhone app. I don't think they have added it to their Android app yet. I have Android, so I have not tried the computer vision component from my app.
They may also have limited species for your area, however, the great thing about iNaturalist is that anyone can upload observations. I believe for the computer vision to be effective, they want to have at least 20 verified observations of a species by 20 different people before they add it to their model. The app is from the California Academy of Science. You may want to contact them to see if you can accelerate the process.
Best of luck!
Ed
Rhino Carpentry: The Making of Lola the Rhino in Augmented Reality
19 July 2017 12:00am
SMART 2016 Annual Report
5 July 2017 7:26pm
18 July 2017 1:10pm
Thanks for sharing this, Drew! We have a number of SMART focused case studies and articles in our Resources area that might also be worth checking out if you're considering using SMART in your work:
- The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) - Alexa Montefiore gave a nice introduction to SMART in this first overview article
- Video: Discover the SMART Approach - recorded in June 2016, this talk was presented by Barney Long (@Barney_Long ), Emma Stokes (@estokes ) , Jonathan Palmer (@jpalmer ) and Alexa Montefiore, this talk explains the origins of SMART, offers case studies of successful applications and outlines future development plans for the methodology. The session concludes with an interactive Q&A session, which offered the opportunity to delve deeper into the practicalities of implementing SMART.
- Getting SMART in Cambodia - In this talk, Kate West (@katewest ), Manager of our Marine Conservation Group, shares her key lessons learnt from implementing SMART in a marine context and dives deep into the limitations and considerations that need to be taken into account when implementing the SMART approach. This is a valuable talk for any team considering deploying SMART in a marine context.
From the Field: Developing a new camera trap data management tool
7 July 2017 12:00am
Website developers; engaging research to those working on the ground
1 June 2017 12:33pm
29 June 2017 7:58pm
Hi Kate try www.ushahidi.com based in Kenya.
I have no affiliation with them I have seen the work they do.
5 July 2017 2:48pm
Hello Baker,
What kind of website you are trying to create? Like do you just want to share research data to those organizations or is it just to share reports (as in complete report based on the data but the actual data are not shared) or is it something else? I think Vizzuality is a good option since they have background working with big data, I am not really sure about other firms that offered data science in their development works since not many firms offer that type of development.
Ting Wai
Leverage Space Technology for Wildlife Protection with the European Space Agency Kick-start Grant
5 July 2017 12:00am
Deploying poaching monitoring with Sapelli app
28 June 2017 2:38pm
Open source mobile mapping with Leaflet
21 June 2017 4:59pm
Naturewatch: Lessons from the field of app development
21 June 2017 12:00am
2017 Write Speak Code Conference for Women in Tech
6 June 2017 8:50pm
From the Field: Eric Becker and designing sensors for wildlife
22 May 2017 12:00am
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge: Mars Omega LLP Boosts Wildlife Crime Intelligence
11 May 2017 12:00am
Getting SMART in Cambodia
8 May 2017 12:00am
From the Field: Dr Raman Sukumar and Technology Developments Needed to Conserve Elephants
5 April 2017 12:00am
Modeling techniques
29 March 2017 1:20pm
29 March 2017 1:38pm
Hi Priyanka,
From your post, I believe you mean applications for modeling data, right? There are many depending on the area or environmental topic you are working on, such as QGIS, Movebank, Google Fusion Tables, iPlover, etc. What does everyone else in the community have to say about this?
@sivakumar @Hangiw @dave @wai.yee @StephODonnell - What are your thoughts?
29 March 2017 2:42pm
Hi Priyanka,
I'll second what John's posted - it would be helpful to know a little more about what you're looking to do before we can answer your query. What is you project? What sort of data do you have? What are you looking to model?
Steph
29 March 2017 3:11pm
Hi Steph,
Actully, it's my presentation topic in class, Now I don't have a data but have to deliever an information in general. So can I produce depctive data to show how to represent any model.
Priyanka
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Our favourites from 2016
1 March 2017 12:00am
Big Ocean Button Challenge
16 February 2017 3:42pm
Survey123 and Collector
31 October 2016 3:24pm
19 December 2016 1:24am
I am finding ArcGIS Collector very usefull. I can say, as an dedicated R coder, some things are worth paying money for and Collector is one of the. I have used it to implement several monitoring and data collection projects. I particularly like the assurance that data will not be lost on the device and the ability to cache base maps.
2 February 2017 6:42pm
Dear BPdorsey, Collector will support custom basemaps ? It wasn't an option a few months ago.
3 February 2017 1:59pm
Thanks for the comments so far everyone
We have used custom basemaps in Collector. You need to publish a tile layer to ArcGIS Online,( I'm not sure if an organisational account is needed for this.)add it to your map and then you can download that tile layer to your device
https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/share-maps/publish-tiles.htm
Have you used Wildbook?
6 January 2017 4:31pm
Conservation Leadership Programme 2017 Award
21 November 2016 12:00am
Accelerators For Wildlife Conservation Apps?
31 October 2016 5:35pm
15 November 2016 7:54pm
Hi Judit,
She sounds like a great resource. I will be sure to reach out.
Thank you,
Megan
16 November 2016 3:26pm
Hi Megan,
It sounds very interesting the app you are developing. I am working for a smaller nature conservation Fund and am trying a partnership with a platform that is also in development and aimed at connecting people and organizations, facilitate update and knowledge sharing and increasing the visibility and donor pool of the organisations. As I said it's still in development but you can take a look if you like www.pifworld.com/eng. I am however also very curious to get to know other (potential) tools that work similar.
It would be great to chat one time to get better acquainted, maybe you can send me your contact details by PM if you'd like to follow up?
Best, Anne Alexandre
17 November 2016 5:08am
Hi Anne,
Thanks for reaching out and sharing what you are working on. I will PM you now.
September Meetup: Gaming for Conservation Impact, Thursday 29th Sept
27 September 2016 10:43am
10 October 2016 9:28am
Thanks Alasdair for signing up! Happy to welcome you as one of our test users. The link will follow in a bit, meanwhile feel free to join our Facebook Play Group to get weekly updates on our process and backstories of the amazing animals we're allowed to work with: https://www.facebook.com/groups/IoEPlay/
Corinna
16 November 2016 2:22pm
Im sorry I missed this event - I hope there will be others like it...
16 November 2016 2:32pm
Hi Karina,
There most definitely will be more events like this one. We are thinking of holding another gaming for conservation meetup in early 2017, potentially in London. Would that be of interest?
Hmm. having looked up where Wentworth institute of Technology is - looks like you're actually based in the USA Cambridge. Do you ever make it over to the UK? Otherwise, maybe we could look into organising something more local to you..
Steph
Carnivore Tracker app to document carnivores in Namibia
1 November 2016 2:59am
15 November 2016 7:09pm
Thanks Karin! Very interesting app. I will ask for permission to review it in my website.
Best
Judit
27 August 2017 9:20pm
I recomended cybertracker. Is easy and flexible app for android and works without cellphone coverage.