Wildlife crime is one of the greatest challenges facing conservation, and one of the conservation tech world's biggest areas of innovation. With new ideas and solutions constantly being put forth to track and protect species targeted by poachers, manage protected areas and support rangers, and combat the growing online market for illegal wildlife products, the engineers and conservationists working to solve wildlife crime's many challenges rely on tools like machine learning, biologging, camera traps, acoustic monitoring, drones, mobile apps, and more.
This wide variety of overlapping technology makes our Wildlife Crime group a potential melting pot for many of our other communities, and makes it an especially exciting place to find collaborators working in different tech spheres to meet a common goal. Whether you're a camera trap expert looking for information on thermal vision to spot potential poachers, a machine learning expert with the skills to analyze acoustic data for gunshots, or a protected area manager seeking the latest integrated mobile tools, this group can connect you with the right members of our community!
Below, you'll find WILDLABS resources and conversations to help you understand how different technologies are being put to work in the fight against wildlife crime, and what conservation tech practitioners need for these tools to be effective.
Three Tutorials and Videos for Beginners:
- How do I use AI to fight wildlife crime? | Lily Xu, Tech Tutors
- WWF Wildlife Crime Technology Project | Eric Becker, Virtual Meetups
- SmartParks | Laurens de Groot, Virtual Meetups
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- Snare detection technologies | Rachel Kramer
- Tools for conservation management | Chris Muashekele
- Looking for Intelligence Database Software | Dexter Oelrichs
Three Articles for Beginners:
- Using AIS data to investigate the world's fishing ports, Max Schofield
- How do Wildlife Crime Experts view Remote Sensing Technologies used to Combat Illegal Wildlife Crime?, Isla Duporge
- Metal Detecting Sensors for Anti-Poaching, Sam Seccombe
Join this group now to get to know our community and start discussing solutions and ideas together!
Header photo: © Frank af Petersens/Save the Elephants
University of Adelaide
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Asst. Prof @ MIT with research at the intersection of computer vision, biodiversity monitoring, conservation, and sustainability.
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Arribada Initiative
Director at Arribada, a UK-based conservation technology research & development organisation
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- @rowan
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Octophin Digital
Jack of all Trades. I've been a zoo keeper, a conservation geneticist and a web developer who specialises in conservation projects and orgs.
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I am the project coordinator of the Wildlife Forensic Fund. We help combat wildlife crime by funding the training of first responders to preserve evidence and take them to court successfully. We are eager to connect with wildlife forensics enthusiasts.
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- @LindseyHarris
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Head of Wildlife Trade, Fauna & Flora
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I'm a Mechanical Engineer and I have been involved in test and measurement, IT maintenance consulting, database development, field installation, field maintenance, systems analysis, theater composition and an active synthesist. Currently engaged in conservation volunteer work
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Conservation Writer, Storyteller, & Digital Strategist
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Zoological Society London (ZSL)
Monitoring & Technology Lead, Conservation & Policy, ZSL
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Julia Martínez Pardo et al., Published in Biological Conservation
4 June 2022
Authors: Ritwik Kulkarni, Enrico Di Minin
29 May 2022
Mongabay article on the recently launched Centre for Wildlife Forensics in Singapore, noting their successes so far in catching wildlife traffickers and uncovering trafficking routes
29 May 2022
Our first WILDLABS Editorial Series is now available for download! Read the full Technical Difficulties collection and explore stories of challenges, failures, and lessons learned from the conservation tech community....
19 January 2022
According to a news article published by Yahoo on September 28th, 2021, all Online technology companies in the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online reported removing or blocking over 11.6 million listings and...
6 December 2021
In her contribution to the Technical Difficulties Editorial Series, Christie Sampson shares how the devastating experience of losing collared elephants to an unexpected poaching threat lead to an improved understanding...
3 November 2021
In their three-part interview from our new series Technical Difficulties, Colby Loucks and Eric Becker share the failures they've encountered and learned from throughout six years of working on the WWF-US Wildlife Crime...
27 October 2021
In their three-part interview from our new series Technical Difficulties, Colby Loucks and Eric Becker share the failures they've encountered and learned from throughout six years of working on the WWF-US Wildlife Crime...
20 October 2021
In their three-part interview from our new series Technical Difficulties, Colby Loucks and Eric Becker share the failures they've encountered and learned from throughout six years of working on the WWF-US Wildlife Crime...
13 October 2021
Singapore's National Parks Board (NParks) has now opened the country's first Centre for Wildlife Forensics (CWF), and launched a new K9 unit to help uncover illegal wildlife and wildlife products at Singapore’s borders.
20 September 2021
Check out WILDLABS' feature about the importance of building a community in the conservation technology world, shared on the IUCN World Conservation Congress blog to celebrate their upcoming event. Read an excerpt by...
17 May 2021
Our friends at the Conservation Leadership Programme are proud to announce their 2021 CLP Team Award recipients! We'll be featuring interviews with some CLP winners about their projects, the technology they're using,...
17 May 2021
November 2023
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1 R&D Projects
37 Organisations
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Dear Members of Wildlife Crime Group, Greetings from India! Hope you are well and taking good care of yourself. :-) ... |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 years 4 months ago | |
A panel of 25 speakers from multiple disciplines will offer collective insight and highlight why there is a need to look through numerous... |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 years 7 months ago | |
I am really curious! I will ask my old manager and get back to you. |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 years 9 months ago | |
Hi Wildlife Crime comm, Just wanted to share this really interesting conversation happening over in the FIT group: Thinking Outside... |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 years 10 months ago | |
Hi Richard, I've been working with Kerinci Seblat National Park in Sumatra for the better part of 20 years focusing primarily to countering tiger and other wildlife... |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 years 11 months ago | |
The Global Wildlife Program (GWP) is a partnership on Wildlife Conservation and Crime Prevention for Sustainable Development led by the... |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 years 11 months ago | |
I am writing a series of articles for Utrecht University (NL) about how synthetic biology, cloning, genetic modification and habitat... |
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Wildlife Crime | 4 years 2 months ago | |
The ASC conference happens annually, the next one will be in Washington DC over the 18-21 November 2020. Details for the pre-conference workshops are only e-mailed a few... |
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Wildlife Crime | 4 years 5 months ago | |
Hi All, I am a natural history producer and I am looking for current lion relocation projects. If anyone knows of anyone working... |
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Wildlife Crime | 4 years 7 months ago | |
Hi Liev, I'm not an expert on this stuff, but from the sound of it, your answer will depend on what you're looking to focus on. By 'illegal', do you mean... |
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Wildlife Crime | 4 years 8 months ago | |
Hey everyone, Thanks for your interest in our virtual meetup special, Scaling technology solutions to tackle the illegal wildlife trade... |
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Wildlife Crime | 4 years 11 months ago | |
Thanks for the wonderful answer to Nik's query, Joachim! I think you covered everything, but to put a cap on it: for our good to make a long term impact, it has to survive the... |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 3 months ago |
Southeast Asia Counter Wildlife Crime Program Coordinator
31 May 2023 1:00pm
How do I get started with collecting mobile digital data to combat Illegal Wildlife Trade?
16 May 2023 11:59pm
[Recordings Now Available!) EarthRanger User Conference
27 April 2023 5:52am
Artificial Intelligence and Conservation with Lily Xu
26 April 2023 8:41pm
WWF's recent Fuller Seminar Series on Artificial Intelligence and Conservation featured some familiar faces from the WILDLABS community, including our past Tech Tutor Lily Xu! Check out her presentation talking about AI-based causal reasoning and how it can be applied to conservation challenges.
Anti-poaching tech vulnerable to cyber attacks, study finds | ITWeb
26 April 2023 2:48pm
While tech deployment has often been hailed for playing a critical role in the fight against poaching, these technologies bring with them the risk of cyber attacks. This is based on a study conducted by Orange Cyberdefense Academy’s Christelle Steyn, as part of her thesis titled: “Towards a Critical Review of Cybersecurity Risks in Anti-Poaching Systems in South Africa”.
Congo Basin activity?
30 March 2023 9:14pm
Drones for IUU (illegal fishing activities & vessel monitoring)
20 March 2023 6:00am
11 April 2023 5:44am
Fantastic news, and so great to see it having a positive impact immediately. I am hoping for the same effectiveness here!
11 April 2023 5:48am
Hi Frank! Thanks so much for your reply. Yes I have been looking into the same sort of workflow as with camera traps etc and seem to be getting somewhere (although am yet to have my own data set with which to check!).
Yes, with the transponder issue, actually NONE of the boats here have them! There has been a push to get boats to install them further down the coast, but it was marred by the usual corruption and forceless enforcement. So everything will be visual, rather than working on any signal given out by the boats themselves. I am looking into ai programs that can analyse footage and as you say, it can be done with species so I see no reason it cannot be done with vessels given the parameters to look for
14 April 2023 12:57am
Seeing the pictures that @lmccaskill uploaded got my brain storming, so to say. Are you working with similar small boats? I was assuming bigger fishing ships that are registered somewhere. If the boats are not registered and there are no existing photos of them, and you want to identify the individual boats, you'll need to build your own catalogue to train an AI.
However / in addition, if the boats have written text on them with a name or a code or number, like in the pictures, then it should be ridiculously easy to identify boats. No AI needed. I discovered recently that my laptop has started showing find results based on text in photos. If different boats are of the same model, again like in the pictures, then there is nothing else left than what is written on them ... well, perhaps the color scheme.
... or perhaps face recognition if the image quality allows it. But then you'll be at square 1 again with training an AI.
Rhino horns in medicine
2 April 2023 2:22pm
How do I select an ivory sampling method to generate intelligence data?
15 March 2023 11:56am
Google Lens as a citizen's tool to report IWT
24 February 2023 9:30am
Mobilising East African nature restoration professionals
21 February 2023 3:57pm
Operation Pangolin launches to save world's most trafficked wild mammal
16 February 2023 7:51pm
17 February 2023 1:50am
Hiring Full Stack Developer at Conservation X Labs
10 February 2023 5:35pm
New Paper - The sound of the illegal: Applying bioacoustics for long-term monitoring of illegal cattle in protected areas
12 January 2023 5:20pm
This study uses passive acoustic monitoring to record the patterns of illegal cattle occurrence within protected areas in the Brazilian Pantanal.
Frontiers Symposium: Digital tools for reversing environmental degradation
5 October 2022 10:23am
Senior Conservation Technology Expert Position (Consultancy) with the Global Wildlife Program
22 September 2022 5:35pm
Survey for Doctoral Research on Poaching in Protected Areas
29 August 2022 10:43pm
Ceres Wild Rhino application
22 August 2022 1:29am
29 September 2022 4:05am
CERES TAG
22 July 2022 3:36am
A Triphibian Surveillance Vehicle
9 July 2022 2:23pm
Hello there
1 July 2022 5:00pm
Program Coordinator - Learning and Leadership for Conservation (LLC)
23 June 2022 2:45pm
New wildlife forensics lab - Singapore
29 May 2022 12:34pm
Solar-powered anti-poaching motorbikes
15 February 2021 12:55pm
5 October 2021 5:05am
Electric motorcycles definitely have advantages in the bush, and I would like to see more of that! Apart from the advantages mentioned by that site, the low speed torque and clutchless nature of electric drives make it a natural for rough terrain.
The bikes you linked to show their purebred sports/competition pedigree. Workhorse motorcycles for the rough look very different, for instance the German and Russian sidecar bikes of WW2, and the scooters used in farms today in SE Asia (especially Vietnam) often tow trailers or have sidecars and they handle offroad conditions well enough. Interdiction in flagrante delecti is where speed and agility are paramount, but I don't know how often that occurs, or if it is desireable.
They sure do look like fun though.
11 October 2021 11:17am
That an additional tool but I imagine that it will be only efficient in open terrain and mostly in southern African rainforest protected area. Not sure that it will be a game changer but might bring new ideas, let see how it goes.
2 April 2022 12:14pm
Thanks for the sharing the information. In India as well solar-powered e-bike for forest guards was piloted (See https://www.thebetterindia.com/267799/nit-karnataka-electric-bike-forest-surveillance-kudremukh-battery-range-specs/). It seems like a good technology but it has to be tested widely on different forest terrains...
Issues in CITES wildlife enforcement information sharing
2 April 2022 10:42am
Survey for Doctoral Research on Poaching in Protected Areas
11 March 2022 8:05pm
26 March 2022 10:57am
I tried to fill it out but it's not letting me finish because all the questions are set to be required? Some of them are not relevant or the info is unknown to me, but not all the questions have this as an answer option. Just something to consider FYI
28 March 2022 7:14pm
Hello. I have reviewed the questions this am and all the questions on the survey that force a response should have a N/A or "I don't know" option. That said, there are still some bugs that I have found with the survey. Please email me at [email protected] if you encounter any more issues and I will be happy to address them promptly. Thank you very much for taking the time to complete the survey.
Wendy
Anti-poaching CCTV and boat sensor
21 February 2022 2:02am
5 March 2022 6:06am
Hi,
I've been working on a buoy-mounted underwater acoustic recorder, kinda like what you're talking about. I'll send you a concept note.
-harold
Download Now: The Technical Difficulties Editorial Series
19 January 2022 12:00am
25 April 2023 5:08pm
greetings!
i sent you a PM regarding this, feel free to contact me however is most convenient for you -
regards,
chris