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

Hi Sherril, 
I can't believe this was posted almost a month ago. And more surprising that there are no comments about it yet. 

That experience you had is one of the kind, because most people in conservation don't get to deal with ethics and moral issues in the front line that often. It's just because most people do desk work. Including managing directors of projects deployed in remote places. I can relate your experience to any field, I would say it's almost a human behavior classics. I understand it can be frustrating and also a lonely journey. Myself I had experience a lot of that in the last years. To a point that I was almost quitting doing my best for conservation, I was burnt out for seeing that the reality was a very different picture from the marketing about it. But I feel fortunate that I have been observing these realities in the sector first-hand for long time now. And because I did it all independently and self funded I can speak my mind about it. Which there are not many people with that freedom I found out. 

You talk about illegal practices, in countries where corruption seems more "brutal", for governments and organizations the fact that something is illegal can be pretty relative concept. And methods follow short when that is the case. Many times I observed apparent combat of poaching activities, but after years of observation and doing my own research it was clear that the local governments were pretty aware of illegal activities and just not being honest enough to address them. Mainly because the donors are far away, way removed from the realities in the front line, so the remoteness of some places allows for a very flexible understanding of ethics in some cases. 

Your experience is very valuable, I'm glad to hear that you got the permits at the end. And good luck with your research, remember to write, record and share your experiences. There is a lot of people in the same situation. Stay independent, stay free, share your knowledge. 

Best, Luciano
nowforwildlife.org

Hi @lucianofoglia 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with the community. What you've touched on resonates with a number of users and developers (looking at you @Rob_Appleby) who share similar concerns and are keen to address these issues.

As a beliver in open sourcing conservation technologies, to mitigate issues you've noted (maintenance of technologies / solutions, repairability, technical assistance to name but a few), really the only way to achieve this in my eyes is through the promotion of openness to enable a wide range of both technical and non-technical users to form the pool of skills needed to react to what you have stated. If they can repair a device, or modify it easily, we can solve the waste issue and promote reusability, but first they need access to achieve this and commerical companies typically shy away from releasing designs to protect against their IP that they keep in house to sell devices / solutions. 

I would think for an organisation to achieve the same the community would need to help manufacturers and developers open and share hardware designs, software, repairability guides etc, but the reality today is as you have described.

One interesting conversation is around a kitemark, i.e a stamp of approval similar to the Open Source Hardware Association's OSHWA Certification), but as it's not always hardware related, the kitemark could cover repairability (making enclosure designs open access, or levels of openness to start to address the issue). Have a look at https://certification.oshwa.org/ for more info. I spent some time discussing an Open IoT Kitemark with http://www.designswarm.com/  back in 2020 with similar values as you have described - https://iot.london/openiot/

You may want to talk more about this at the upcoming Conservation Optimism Summit too. 

Happy to join you on your journey :)

Alasdair (Arribada)