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
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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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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Dzanga-Ndoki national park biodiversity monitoring
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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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Program Officer, Conservation Technology Program, WCS
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SMART combines a ranger-based data collection tool with capacity building and a suite of best practices aimed at helping protected area and wildlife managers better monitor, evaluate and adaptively manage their...
15 March 2016
When Victoria Espinel, President and CEO of BSA | The Software Alliance, spoke at the WWF Fuller Symposium, she took us on a whistle-stop tour of case studies where software and data are transforming our understanding...
10 March 2016
We are living in the midst of a pretty exciting era. Never before has humanity been more educated, more connected, more enabled, or more empowered than we are today. There are many reasons to be optimistic about the...
17 February 2016
New horizon scanning report published this month identifies 15 emerging threats and opportunities for global biodiversity.
3 February 2016
From artificial “sniffer” technologies to portable DNA sequencers, the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge received hundreds of innovative ideas to help stamp out wildlife crime. Now, the Challenge is proud to announce 16...
22 January 2016
Gary Atkinson, Director of Emerging Technologies at ARM, explains why we should be interested in the Internet of Things. Could it be a game changer for conservation?
10 December 2015
Can games have real world impacts on issues like the illegal wildlife trade? In part two of his case study for the Gaming for Conservation Group, Peter Jacobs discusses United for Wildlife's efforts to engage young...
3 December 2015
The 2015 Fuller Symposium brought together thought leaders in science, policy, business, conservation and development to tackle emerging issues facing our planet. This framing piece was developed to support a Fuller...
26 November 2015
Article
Traceability (knowing where products come from and how they are made) is a foundational pre-cursor for many sustainability interventions. While many tools have been developed to offer high-level insight about the...
26 November 2015
Can games raise awareness of conservation issues like the illegal wildlife trade? In part one of his case study for the Gaming for Conservation Group, Peter Jacobs discusses how United for Wildlife is partnering with...
25 November 2015
Article
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is nuclear or mitochondrial DNA that is released from an organism into the environment. Sources of eDNA include secreted faeces, mucous, gametes, shed skin, hair and carcasses. In this article,...
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hello - I wrote up a lessons learned from the Hack for Wildlife that we ran in Chicago. https://medium.com/@mygshah/i-just-ran-my-first-hackathon-you-can-too-... |
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Wildlife Crime | 7 years 5 months ago | |
Hi Isla, The 3 threats are all situational and location dependent. For example, in South Africa there is a very well established muti industry and huge muti markets in KwaZulu... |
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Wildlife Crime | 7 years 6 months ago | |
Wildlife Crime group, A set of Training Guidelines for Anti Poaching Field Rangers were launched... |
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Wildlife Crime | 7 years 6 months ago | |
Hi everyone, Isla has shared the results of this survey in a new article in our Resources area. You can read her full analysis of the survey results here: https... |
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Wildlife Crime | 7 years 9 months ago | |
That paper is available on Sci Hub. |
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Wildlife Crime | 8 years ago | |
Hi Rachel, the intended audience is individuals and organizations working on tech/innovative solutions to protect wildlife, although the principles of partnership building in... |
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Wildlife Crime | 8 years ago | |
I just saw this article about embedding GPS trackers in fake turtle eggs. It reminded me of the Nat Geo story from last year where they did... |
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Wildlife Crime | 8 years ago | |
It sounds like @David+Baisch at Conservation X Labs just ordered a SCiO spec and developer's kit to test its sensitivity. They're interested in ... |
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Wildlife Crime | 8 years ago | |
Hello all, A new rhino poaching report is out by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. ... |
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Wildlife Crime | 8 years 1 month ago | |
For those who are interested in following changes in rhino poaching numbers in South Africa, I highly reccommend this website. They post... |
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Wildlife Crime | 8 years 2 months ago | |
Here's a few apps relevant to combatting wildlife crime. 1. ENV- Report Wildlife Crime - This app specifically focuses on... |
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Wildlife Crime | 8 years 4 months ago | |
Hi Gautam, I think the best way is have them read the thread, and then get back to me with questions - I can then respond on a case-by-case basis. Our website is here:... |
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Wildlife Crime | 8 years 6 months ago |
Challenge: ElephantEdge
![](/sites/default/files/screen_shot_2020-08-11_at_3.09.29_pm-.png)
11 August 2020 12:00am
Metal Detecting Sensors for Anti-Poaching
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10 August 2020 12:00am
Recognising illegally-traded animal body parts
18 June 2020 7:32pm
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.
FIT Identification - Possibilities for use as an anti-poaching tool?
13 July 2020 10:43pm
Tech4Wildlife News: SMART Mobile
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23 June 2020 12:00am
We want to provide tracking and surveillance tech FOC to catch poachers.
14 October 2019 3:22pm
14 October 2019 11:57pm
I RUN THE GLOBAL WILDLIFE WARRIORS NETWORK COMPRISED OF 30 ONLINE LOCATIONS IN 30 COUNTRIES WITH A LARGE TEAM OF ADMINISTRATORS. WE ALSO HAVE ADMINS THAT ARE ANTI-POACHING RANGERS IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF AFRICA. LAST YEAR GWW REACHED OVER 5,000,000 PEOPLE. THAT IS ALWAYS GWW'S MAIN GOAL, OUTREACH! AS WE BELIEVE THAT THIS WAR TO PROTECT WILDLIFE WILL BE WON ONCE THE CREED OF CONSERVATION REACHES CRITICAL MASS GLOBALLY
21 April 2020 11:11am
Hello MH, can we get into contact what edge devices (camera traps, CCTV or other sensing) you might have? we are working on the frontline of technology as a force mutliplier for ant-poaching units mostly in southern africa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOWW0LwKc0g
thank you and regards
Wolf
17 June 2020 3:55pm
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 poaching and IWT in/around one of the largest national parks in Asia, might be good to talk, at very least you would have a better idea of some of the issues our ranger teams face.
Innovator Interview: Hack the Poacher
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4 June 2020 12:00am
World Bank Conservation Tech Survey
3 June 2020 2:46pm
WILDLABS Tech Hub: WWF PandaSat
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13 April 2020 12:00am
WILDLABS Tech Hub: Poreprint
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26 March 2020 12:00am
Online Workshop: Conservation Technology
![](/sites/default/files/hackthepoacher-.jpg)
23 March 2020 12:00am
Webinar: IIED Community-Based Approaches to Tackling Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade
![](/sites/default/files/iiedlogo_0-.jpg)
17 March 2020 12:00am
Reading tips on De-extinction/Regenesis
12 March 2020 4:10pm
Accepting Applications: ArcGIS Solutions for Protected Area Management
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4 March 2020 12:00am
Call for Nominations: Tusk Conservation Awards
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3 March 2020 12:00am
12 Nov: Tech-crime workshops
4 September 2019 12:08pm
19 November 2019 1:05pm
Hi - how can I find out about future meetups please?
22 November 2019 3:14pm
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 months in advance to conference participants. I won't be attending next year, otherwise I would post any opportunities that come up on here. You could e-mail the organiser (Susan Case; [email protected]) next September 2020 to see if there are any tech-related workshops planned.
Lion Relocation Projects
17 October 2019 11:13am
Instant Detect 2.0 emerges
![](/sites/default/files/sambio-.jpg)
3 September 2019 12:00am
16 November 2023 1:11am
Which NGOs are keeping detailed track of the forest-product supply chain?
11 July 2019 8:21pm
22 August 2019 5:06pm
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 'obtained a contract through corrupt means', 'failing to adhere to an existing contract in terms of engagement with a community' or 'linked to human rights allegations in terms of treating workers'?
By 'unsustainable', do you mean 'responsible for polluting the local area', 'involved in activities like palm oil production that might be globally unsustainable', or 'failing to provide employment opportunities to local residents'?
Or is the answer 'all of the above'?
I've added a few tools below that I've come across, all of which have a lot of information about various aspects of the questions you mentioned. Hope it helps!
- https://ejatlas.org/
- https://landmatrix.org/
- https://resourcecontracts.org/ and https://resourceprojects.org/
- https://openlandcontracts.org/
- https://opendevelopmentmekong.net/search/data/
- https://rspo.org/certification/search-for-certified-growers
- https://open.sourcemap.com/
Tech In the Wild: Where technology meets conservation
![](/sites/default/files/2023-06/F%26F%20brand%20logo%20white%20%282%29.png)
22 August 2019 12:00am
ESA Kickstarter: Environmental Crimes
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22 August 2019 12:00am
Virtual Meetup Special Discussion: Scaling technology solutions to tackle the illegal wildlife trade
6 June 2019 3:28pm
Technology companies, FCO, and conservation NGOs come together to scale technology solutions to end wildlife crime
![](/sites/default/files/2023-05/favicon%20on%20black_0.png)
4 June 2019 12:00am
AI for Earth Innovation Grant (extended)
![](/sites/default/files/leonardo_dicaprio_foundation-.jpg)
4 June 2019 12:00am
How machine learning can help fight illegal wildlife trade on social media
![](/sites/default/files/emrico_di_minin-.jpg)
31 May 2019 12:00am
Caught in the crossfire – Tapirs in tiger territory
![](/sites/default/files/tim_knight-.jpeg)
31 May 2019 12:00am
Technology lab focused on wildlife protection opens on Ol Pejeta Conservancy
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31 May 2019 12:00am
GWP Webinar Recording: Using SMART at scale for effective wildlife protection
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21 May 2019 12:00am
WILDLABS TECH HUB Showcase
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17 May 2019 12:00am
Meet the WILDLABS TECH HUB Winners
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13 May 2019 12:00am
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.