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
Conservation Writer, Storyteller, & Digital Strategist
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Zoological Society London (ZSL)
Monitoring & Technology Lead, Conservation & Policy, ZSL
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Studying Biodiversity, Wildlife, and Ecosystem Health @ UEdi. Professionally software engineer, program manager, developer educator
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I've been working in IT for the past four years and Cybersecurity for the past year and a half. I'm looking to leverage my technical skills towards conservation purposes. I'm new on this journey and excited to jump of volunteer activities where I'm able!
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- @Mumonkan
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Wild Me
Software Engineer for Wildlife Conservation
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Dzanga-Ndoki national park biodiversity monitoring
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WILDLABS
This account is managed by the WILDLABS Team. Tag us or DM whenever you need help from our community team.
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World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
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Technologist, birder, photographer and mountain guide.
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- @vandita_shukla
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PhD candidate studying drone flight planning for enabling tracking and identification of individual characteristics of wildlife; member of the WildDrone, an MSCA Doctoral Network funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research
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Movement Ecologist studying the where, why, and how animals move throughout our world. Current work is investigating the movement and energetics of large neotropical bats in a changing environment with ephemeral resources.
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This webinar recording will provide a brief overview of current SMART functionality, highlight case studies of large scale and innovative SMART deployments, and detail how SMART is embracing and leveraging new...
21 May 2019
In February, we released an open call for the WILDLABS TECH HUB, offering 3 months of support for solutions using technolgy to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. We were overwhelmed by an incredible 37 submissions,...
13 May 2019
To realise the potential benefits of data for our societies and economies we need trustworthy data stewardship. We need to establish different approaches to deciding who should have access to data, for what purposes and...
15 April 2019
Each year Tusk honours extraordinary individuals battling on the frontline in the fight for wildlife conservation in Africa. Nominate your 2019 Conservation Heroes now.
12 February 2019
Jacqueline Ramos explains how artificial intelligence can help to track and prevent chimpanzee trafficking across the globe.
6 February 2019
The Open Data Institute and the Office for AI are partnering to explore how data trusts could help to solve environmental, societal and industry challenges by enabling increased access to data while retaining trust....
31 January 2019
FLIR have announced the Kifaru Rising Project, a multi-year effort in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to deploy FLIR thermal imaging technology to help improve wildlife ranger safety and contribute to their...
18 January 2019
Although invaluable for conservation and ecological research, camera traps frequently take pictures of people as well as wildlife. This has important implications for privacy and human rights and may ultimately...
22 November 2018
Ted Schmitt joined us for a lunchtime lecture in which he shared his experiences working across Africa the past five years with protected area managers, anti-trafficking organisations, and scientists to effectively...
22 November 2018
Motion-sensing wildlife-tracking cameras in South Sudan have captured 425,000 photos, documenting species not previously known to be found in this richly forested area. The team is now asking for your help to identify ...
22 August 2018
Article
In this case study, conservation ecologist Ayesha Tulloch takes us behind the scenes of her recent paper, which came out in Nature Ecology & Evolution earlier this month. In this paper, Ayesha and her team present a...
20 August 2018
Society’s Marine Protection Prize will award $450,000 for innovative solutions and technologies that protect and sustain fisheries in coastal communities
1 February 2018
June 2024
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November 2023
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37 Organisations
Recently updated products
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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In positive news from China, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration (NFGA) has teamed up with Tencent to combat IWT online... |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 5 months ago | |
Your blog post was great. keep up the good work! Michael |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 6 months ago | |
Hi, I went to this workshop, led by Sonia O'Connor and James Barrett, and I would recommend it. Both Sonia and James have many years of experience... |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 7 months ago | |
Upcoming webinar session on Pangolin Trade in China will be delivered TOMORROW at 9 AM BST/ 3 PM ICT by Yifu Wang from the University of... |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 9 months ago | |
Interested in learning about conservation criminology? See the attached details on a fall 2018 3-credit graduate-level online course and... |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 9 months ago | |
Hi Maike! I used ORA Pro which was developed by Carnegie Mellon University. The 'lite' version is free to use and similar to IBM - http://www.casos.cs.... |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 9 months ago | |
Hello, Does anyone have contact information for SMART trainers that would be itnerested in a short term consultancy for the FFI Liberia... |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 9 months ago | |
On Wednesday (25th July) the Director of Forensic Services at the City of London Police, Tracy Alexander, will be giving a talk titled... |
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Wildlife Crime | 5 years 10 months ago | |
Due to the magnitude and complexity of the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT), conservationists are often only able to fight crises on the ground... |
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Wildlife Crime | 6 years 1 month ago | |
An upcoming event might be of interest to members of this group: Wednesday, March 21, 2018 8:00 - 9:30 am EDT... |
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Wildlife Crime | 6 years 2 months ago | |
Hi @Nafeesa+Esmail - are you already in touch with the TRAFFIC Network about this survey? |
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Wildlife Crime | 6 years 3 months ago | |
Hey teams, Quick link to the devpost page to submit: https://zoohackathon2017.devpost.com Good luck! Steph |
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Wildlife Crime | 6 years 8 months ago |
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
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
Tech Companies Block More than 11.6 Million Transactions for Endangered Wildlife Online
6 December 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: The Death of Giants
3 November 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: Expect the Unexpected
27 October 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: Cleared for Takeoff
20 October 2021 12:00am
Technical Difficulties: Understanding the Realities
13 October 2021 12:00am
NParks opens Singapore’s first Centre for Wildlife Forensics
20 September 2021 12:00am
Tech Tutors: How do I use AI to fight wildlife crime?
1 September 2021 10:59pm
Looking for - Intelligence Database Software
14 June 2021 11:01am
22 June 2021 1:48am
Hi Phil,
Thank you very much! I had not considered them but they are a viable option for sure! The biggest concern would be the security of storing sensitive information online via AWS (or alternative) but lets see if there is a solution.
I'll dig around and come back to you on it! Have a great day
8 July 2021 8:31am
Hi Dexter
We have a bunch of tools for you guys at Natual-solutions.eu ...
Ave a look at https://geonature.fr/ its alll open source, we can translate it all for you if needed ...
Please fell free to email us at
9 July 2021 12:56am
Thank you very much! I'll email you now.
It Takes a #Tech4Wildlife Community
17 May 2021 12:00am
Announcing the 2021 CLP Team Award Winners
17 May 2021 12:00am
Getting Started with Conservation Dogs: An Interview with Paul Bunker
7 May 2021 12:00am
Ecognize: A platform for environmental and conservation issue reporting
8 April 2021 11:47pm
16 April 2021 10:52pm
Update (April 16): I just open-sourced the code at https://github.com/ecognize-hub/ecognize. I released it under the Apache 2.0 license so it can be used for pretty much anything, including commercial use.
Webinar: 'Advances in use of SMART approach, tools and technology'
12 March 2021 12:00am
How do I strategically allocate drones for conservation?
8 February 2021 12:00am
Protecting Wildlife with Machine Learning
29 January 2021 12:00am
New Paper: Empowering Rangers Through Technology and Innovation
27 January 2021 12:00am
Survey for Wildlife Conservation: Do We Need Hand of Technology?
27 December 2020 3:35pm
How do I use open access remote sensing data to monitor fishing?
24 November 2020 12:00am
Webinar: Getting Started With SMART
11 November 2020 12:00am
Hackathon Opportunity: Vaquita Hacks
10 November 2020 12:00am
[Webinar series] Wildlife Crime is Financial Crime: A collaborative approach in the fight against wildlife crime
15 October 2020 10:16am
Designing a Camera Mount with FLIR and WWF
24 August 2020 12:00am
WWF US Conservation Leadership Award
13 August 2020 12:00am
Challenge: ElephantEdge
11 August 2020 12:00am
Metal Detecting Sensors for Anti-Poaching
10 August 2020 12:00am
Recognising illegally-traded animal body parts
18 June 2020 7:32pm
31 July 2020 2:30pm
Hi Sara and Debbie,
Just wanted to chime in here since I actually worked on this exact project several years ago when I was an intern at WWF.
We used scans from a near infrared spectrometer to classify ivory. The model was able to distinguish between fake and real ivory, including even distinguishing between elephant ivory and mammoth ivory. My manager for the internship, Rachel Kramer, had done all the hard work of collecting hundreds of scans of ivory samples from various museum collections and ivory that had been seized.
I am happy to share more details about the project if you are interested. Unfortunately I did not get to see it through because I was only working there for one summer three years ago, but I now work as a data scientist and so I have a lot more experience with this type of modeling.
31 July 2020 3:04pm
Very cool! It makes total sense to use a more informative sensor like a spectrometer for this. I'm not surprised to hear that WWF was interested! Do you know if the model you trained is being used anywhere?
31 July 2020 5:28pm
I am really curious! I will ask my old manager and get back to you.
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