With experts across the WILDLABS community working with every type of technology and in every imaginable environment, our platform is a great place to find advice and resources on choosing what tools are right for your conservation project. Whether you're in the market to try a new camera trap model, want to experiment with drones for the first time, or need help weighing the pros and cons of data management tools, there's someone in the WILDLABS community who can help you make a smart and informed choice!
The Community Base is our general gathering group. It's the place where we cover more general, big picture topics in conservation technology - ones that don't fit neatly into our other groups. If you don't know where to post something, just post it in this group. Our moderators will move it if needed!
At our Community Base, you'll find updates from the WILDLABS team on upcoming events and opportunities, and have the chance to shape our programs and platform with your opinions. And most importantly, the Community Base is also home to our Welcome to WILDLABS thread, the best place to introduce yourself to us and the community. Stop by and tell us what you're working on!
Whether you're new to WILDLABS and want to know where to begin, or you're a longtime member looking for a handy bank of resources, our Getting Started on WILDLABS thread will be your one-stop guide to getting the most out of our platform.
Want to find out more about WILDLABS? Check out our recent community call:
Header image: Ana Verahrami/Elephant Listening Project
Group curators
- @StephODonnell
- | She / Her
WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
I'm the Executive Manager at WILDLABS.
- 152 Resources
- 668 Discussions
- 30 Groups
- @TaliaSpeaker
- | She/her
WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US
- 13 Resources
- 56 Discussions
- 24 Groups
- @EllieW
- | She/Her
- 64 Resources
- 124 Discussions
- 14 Groups
Noé
Hi! I am Aurélie, a dedicated French ornithologist and engineer specialized in conservation technologies. I am currently Program manager for the biodiversity of natural habitats' program in a French NGO called Noé.
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 5 Groups
Software Engineer
- 0 Resources
- 5 Discussions
- 10 Groups
- @carlybatist
- | she/her
Science Outreach Lead-Rainforest Connection (RFCx) & Arbimon; Ecoacoustics, biodiversity monitoring, primates, lemurs
- 69 Resources
- 285 Discussions
- 18 Groups
- @StephODonnell
- | She / Her
WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
I'm the Executive Manager at WILDLABS.
- 152 Resources
- 668 Discussions
- 30 Groups
WILDLABS & Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
I hold a PhD in Biological Sciences and specialize in bioacoustics and passive acoustic monitoring of cetaceans in the Argentine Sea and Antarctica. Recently, I've also embraced computing to leverage technology in enhancing our conservation efforts.
- 7 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 14 Groups
- @HRees
- | Him/His
WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
WILDLABS - Programme Development Manager, keen interest in bats, hyaenas and tech!
- 6 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 4 Groups
American Museum of Natural History
- 1 Resources
- 8 Discussions
- 10 Groups
Freaklabs
I'm an engineer and product designer working on wildlife conservation technology.
- 0 Resources
- 273 Discussions
- 14 Groups
- @CourtneyShuert
- | she/her
I am a behavioural ecologist and eco-physiologist interested in individual differences in marine mammals and other predators
- 0 Resources
- 7 Discussions
- 6 Groups
- @TaliaSpeaker
- | She/her
WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US
- 13 Resources
- 56 Discussions
- 24 Groups
Sustainability Manager for CERES Tag LTD. An animal health company; animal monitoring, conservation, & anti-poaching/ rural crime. Wildlife, livestock, equine & companion. #CeresTrace #CeresWild #CeresRanch
- 2 Resources
- 19 Discussions
- 24 Groups
Interested in EvoDevo, Bioinformatics, Genomes and Conservations Tools. Your contact for SequenceServer. https://sequenceserver.com/
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 5 Groups
WILDLABS just released our three-year trends report sharing insights into how perceptions and engagement with technology for biodiversity and conservation are evolving. Take the 2023 survey and share it widely to help...
15 November 2023
OUT NOW: Our three-year trends report delivers the first global assessment tracking evolving perceptions and engagement in the tech for biodiversity and conservation space. Here are five things we found.
15 November 2023
Article
WILDLABS journeyed through the most significant climate event in Africa this year and delivered a Women in Conservation Technology presentation. Esther Githinji, our East Africa Hub Facilitator discovered that although...
27 October 2023
Listen in to our newest podcast for a behind-the-scenes breakdown with your tech4nature insiders of the latest events, conversations, and news happening in the conservation space.
27 October 2023
Article
There is an illegal mining contract (it's literally against the constitution of Panama!) Being forced upon the people and nature of panama by the Canadian mining company First Quantum and a handful of corrupt...
23 October 2023
Interested in joining our growing global team? WILDLABS is hiring a new position based at WWF-US!
17 October 2023
Many people know of the Mozilla Foundation because of the FireFox browser and other open source software they produce together with countless volunteers. Perhaps less well known, the Mozilla Foundation also runs a...
4 October 2023
The WILDLABS community had a banner year in 2022 as we launched our new platform, created more community-centered programmes, and broke new ground in impactful research and workshops. Read more in our 2022 WILDLABS...
18 September 2023
Article
Five #tech4wildlife people, projects and updates that caught our attention this month. An AI supported bear early warning system, a project that's connecting indigenous communities with high speed internet, exploring...
12 September 2023
IDEA WILD is currently accepting applications from all countries for awards for small equipment grants. Read on to learn more.
11 September 2023
Join us in welcoming Esther Githinji, our WILDLABS East Africa Conservation Technology Facilitator who will grow and support the conservation technology community across our first regional hub in East Africa. Read on to...
1 September 2023
An engaging conversation about wildlife drones
21 August 2023
June 2024
event
event
August 2024
event
October 2024
June 2025
November 2023
event
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hey @antoineede ,I am not sure about that yet video recordings are available or not but you can visit this: SMART Global Congress 2024 | BluePrismMay be here you will get some of... |
+9
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Protected Area Management Tools, Community Base | 1 day 17 hours ago | |
Interesting. What kind of wildlife is conflicting the most where you are ? |
+272
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Community Base | 2 days 10 hours ago | |
Fantastic!! |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Community Base, Early Career, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Marine Conservation, Open Source Solutions | 5 seconds ago | |
Hi @Frank_van_der_Most thanks for flagging that old/broken link. I have updated it to send to this thread here - https://wildlabs.net/discussion/new-platform-help-troubleshooting-... |
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Community Base | 3 days 19 hours ago | |
It's still a choice to close your tabs. Closing all your tabs tends to get you to have to login again.However.... Despite the expiry date on the cookie. linkedin.com logs in... |
+10
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Community Base | 6 days 17 hours ago | |
Thank you so much Alex! |
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Community Base | 1 week 3 days ago | |
Building on Frank's comments, I'd also think about including some conversation about the ethical use of technology - Trishant's talk at Tech Tutors a little while ago sparked a... |
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Community Base, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Early Career | 1 week 4 days ago | |
We'll be presenting Wednesday morning as part of session 10.1b on "Integrating earth observations and biological tools in ecology and evolution to cogenerate knowledge towards... |
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Community Base, Biologging | 2 weeks 4 days ago | |
I noticed the site being annoyingly slow some time last week. Thank you for clearing that up, for finding the cause and solving the issue.I'm not claiming deep knowledge on AI,... |
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Community Base | 1 month 1 week ago | |
Hello Ms Esther👋Thank you for taking your time to reply to me with such helpful response.I'm interested in conservation technology such as camera traps, GIS and Remote sensing,... |
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Early Career, East Africa Community, Community Base | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
Hi Soumya , Interested to know if you are pursuing distance education in ML while at your current job. I would love to hear more about your journey on course specifics... |
+12
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Community Base, Early Career | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
Totally agree.Inititally sceptical until I saw Helena and Graeme were involved.MJ |
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Acoustics, Citizen Science, Community Base, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 month 2 weeks ago |
Let's save our environment
31 January 2024 12:52pm
Remote Sensing and Research group at Dedan Kimathi University have come up with this ebook after a project observing the deterioration of part of the aberdare.
I always welcome efforts that involve young learners so that they benefit and participate. Thank you RSRG Team.
Power managment/Recharging System and Communication System
2 January 2024 4:06pm
26 January 2024 9:03am
Power usage for microcontrollers with solar is much more manageable. For Raspberry Pi's and higher it gets expensive and big.
I'm quite impressed by the specs from the Goal Zero Yeti devices. This can have high capacity and be charged with Solar. Not small though. And the price is not in proportion to the Pi's.
So this 200x model for example, would be close to 16 days running the audio recorder. Let's say 10. without solar. Add solar? Depends on the size of the panels I guess. Power usage for mobile networking? Depends on how much you transmit.
Probably some well documented experiments would be really nice for people here. Sounds like something nice for the next set of grants :)
26 January 2024 2:11pm
Real nice video. I'll have another look in the weekend in detail.
Need advice - image management and tagging
12 January 2024 7:55pm
15 January 2024 8:47pm
Interesting, Iʻll give it a shot. Looks like this could save me some time.
Thanks for the explanation @wade!
24 January 2024 5:16pm
I have no familiarity with Lightroom, but the problem you describe seems like a pretty typical data storage and look up issue. This is the kind of problem that many software engineers deal with on a daily bases. In almost every circumstance this class of problem is solved using a database.
In fact, a potentially useful analysis is that the Lightroom database is not providing the feature set you need.
It seems likely that you are not looking for a software development project, and setting up you own DB would certainly require some effort, but if this is a serious issue for your work, you hope to scale your work up, or bring many other participants into your project, it might make sense to have an information system that better fits your needs.
There are many different databases out there optimized for different sorts of things. For this I might suggest taking a look at MongoDB with GridFS for a couple of reasons.
- It looks like you meta data is in JSON format. Many DBs are JSON compatible, but Mongo is JSON native. It is especially good at storing and retrieving JSON data. Its JSON search capabilities are excellent and easy to use. It looks like you could export your data directly from Lightroom into Mongo, so it might be pretty easy actually.
- Mongo with the GridFS package is an excellent repository for arbitrarily large image files.
- It is straightforward to make a Mongo database accessible via a website.
- They are open source (in a manner of speaking) and you can run it for free.
Disclaimer: I used to work for MongoDB. I don't anymore and I have no vested interest at all, but they make a great product that would really crush this whole class of problem.
25 January 2024 8:32am
Hi!
I would take a look at
Although developed for camera trap imagery, it is by no means restricted to such.
Cheers,
Lars
How are Outdoor Fire Detection Systems Adapted for Small Forest Areas, Considering the Predominance of Indoor Fire Detectors?
8 January 2024 4:27pm
22 January 2024 6:35pm
Fire detection is a sort of broad idea. Usually people detect the products of fire, and most often this is smoke.
Many home fire detectors in the US use a radioactive source and measure the absorption of the radiation by the air. More smoke means more absorption.
For outdoor fire detection, PM2.5 can be a very good smoke proxy, and outdoor PM2.5 sensing is pretty accessible.
This one is very popular in my area.
Kenya Forest Club, Central Region – Kenya Forest Club
20 January 2024 2:53pm
It has been an exciting challenge as a member of Kenya Forest Club whose main aim is solving climate change challenges through early childhood education and training, with a particular interest in forestry.
The club hopes to have members in all schools and setup of tree nurseries
SDZWA Conservation Tech Summer Fellowship
9 January 2024 7:04pm
Happy New Year WILDLabbers! What are you looking forward to in 2024?
2 January 2024 11:31am
2 January 2024 4:01pm
Excited for COP16 later this year in Colombia!
Other events of potential interest -
- World Biodiversity Forum
- European Congress on Conservation Biology
- North American Congress for Conservation Biology
- World Ecoacoustics Congress
- African Bioacoustics Conference
- (virtual) World Species Congress
- UNFCCC COP29
3 January 2024 8:48am
Some really great events to look forward to, thanks so much @carlybatist for sharing these!
Anyone going/presenting/talking at SICB?
1 January 2024 9:11pm
Apply to Beta test Instant Detect 2.0
11 May 2023 10:55am
21 December 2023 3:48am
Will you accept personal/hobbyist focused on conservation on their small plots of land (10-100 acres)?
I would, and know others, who would happily pay more than the official conservationists rate for the service, which could help to further subsidize the project. (Referring to your statement here: https://wildlabs.net/discussion/instant-detect-20-and-related-cost)
Seeking Host Organisations for Travel Scholarship Application
19 December 2023 12:54am
20 December 2023 3:07am
Hi Eva,
Me and my colleagues run a small NGO based on Yogyakarta in Indonesia, although our projects are spread around the country. One of our active project is working with the movement ecology of Sunda gharials in Berbak-Sembilang National Park. One of the other is for Malayan Giant Turtle conservation using one-plan approach, which we are planning to start in situ phase. We can't give you promise about anything, but are able to be the host organization and would love to talk the opportunity!
Cheers,
Dhanu
WILDLABS Colorado Conservation Tech Meetup
19 December 2023 12:04am
WILDLABS Platform Updates
31 May 2022 9:20am
13 January 2023 3:16pm
Hi everyone!
Happy 2023 and a slightly unusual bug fix to mark the first WILDLABS Platform update post of the year.
Our emoji / reaction system broke due to the library it relies on, Twitter's Twemoji, going down (for reasons discussed in the tweet link below). We have had to fall back to native browser emoji while a replacement / mirror of these is slotted in. This may mean emoji display slightly differently for you in the picker, more resembling your current device / browser.
Thank you to @Alasdair for sending me the below tweet which helped work out what was wrong:
If you use Twemoji for anything, it stopped working this morning with the deprecation of MaxCDN.
— Mike Coutermarsh (@mscccc) January 9, 2023
Twitter engineers had been working on a transition plan, but were laid off before it happened. Quite the thread!https://t.co/FiKF3gkpfu
13 December 2023 11:15pm
Hi everyone!
It's been a very busy year of development on the WILDLABS Platform but one with not many of these updates from me. This is mostly due to much of it being behind-the-scenes work that's hard to write about (I'll try below!), or huge, exciting projects and features that are launching in 2024. But I felt an update on some of the major changes we have implemented this year was due so here that is.
Before we go on to the main Platform, it's no longer a secret that we've been working with the WILDLABS Team on building The Inventory: a collaborative conservation technology wiki you'll soon see a lot of if you haven't already joined as a beta tester.
I thought, pretty sensibly given its scope, that the WILDLABS Platform itself was the most feature-full web project you could build, and then The Inventory came along and it's taken things to a whole other level. I'm so proud of what we've built for it and I'm so excited to see it launch and grow; with the entire sector benefiting from a place to find and collaborate on the tools needed to protect the world's life.
I'm looking forward to writing more about The Inventory next year, but there's a great overview of it and how you can get involved by the WILDLABS Team over at https://wildlabs.net/discussion/introducing-inventory-rise-conservation-tech-wiki
We've also got another major WILDLABS Platform feature launching very soon that will have a big impact on the community and its members' contributions. And it's fun. But more of that another time... 🦡
Onto those core platform updates:
Performance
With thousands of database queries, media and more pulled into every part of the site, tuning performance on the WILDLABS Platform has been one of the hardest challenges. I was going to run through an example of just how much information there is aggregated on a page (group statistics, user info, bookmarks, reactions, comments...) but it's a lot and I gave up. So I'll instead just mention some of the things we've done to speed things up over the year.
- Images have been compressed and automatically resized to a far better level than before throughout the system to reduce loading times
- We've cut down the amount of pings back and forth to the server to check for notifications and other live updates (an amusing major change was only checking for these things if the browser tab was active which meant those 100 WILDLABS tab users among you are no longer tiring out the CPU!)
- We've moved our caching system (not making a database query twice if the data hasn't changed basically) to the Redis in memory database system (this had a big impact)
- We've put even more things into that cache so they aren't re-loaded unnecessarily
- We've moved our servers (this week, hence the scheduled maintenance) to some new infrastructure which allowed us to speed things up even further by allocating more memory.
If there's anything in particular that seems slow for you (especially if it's regularly slow), please let the WILDLABS Team know so we can know where to focus on making the next set of performance improvements.
Notifications
Email notifications were something that took a good three total rewrites and a lot of thought to get right. They have been one of the hardest things to work out the best approach and technical structure for but we've got there I hope, and I hope you've liked receiving them (or opted out if you don't want them).
The new activity email notification system works by a user profile setting (you can edit this yourself) of after how many days of inactivity (not visiting the Platform at all) you would like to be notified of what happened while you were away. This comes in the form of:
- Direct messages you've received
- Mentions
- Comments / replies on posts you've made
- Reactions to your content
If none of this happens you don't get an email, you only get an email about the same updates once, and if you visit the Platform yourself you clear any emails from sending. This cuts down the notifications feeling spammy and just lets you know about the direct interactions other members had with your profile since you were last here.
On-Platform notifications (the little bell) remain separate and unchanged.
Other improvements
Here are some of the other bits that we've done across the site since I last posted an update:
- Dozens of design and visual usability tweaks, especially on mobile, to make things more usable and readable. A big shout out to front end developer @valeria who moved on from Octophin this month for all her work on the Platform over the last few years.
- Embeds of external links should be faster and clearer now as we've built our own system off the back of the iframely embed service and cached them the first time they're loaded.
- We've tidied up some of the information collected on events and careers and made certain things required so that it's clearer what something is about and who it is for.
- Introductions / summaries are now compulsory on all content.
- The little hover popups on people's names are in more places across the site (not just mentions) and have more useful, clearer information in them.
- There are some new sort options in the members directory, including sorting a search by members' contributions to the community (also look out for some more tools to count your Platform contributions coming soon).
- We've rebuilt the list of a member's activity that shows up on their / your user profile into a paginated list that shows everything rather than only a handful of recent entries.
- We've rebuilt the sorting and filtering for the "global feed" and "my feed" to more accurately show what is going on on the site and in your groups. The "my feed" list especially should make much more sense now.
-----------
From me and the rest of the Octophin team, I hope you've had a wonderful 2023 on and off the WILDLABS Platform. As challenging as it often is, seeing the activity and collaborations on here every day makes it one of the most rewarding projects to work on.
Looking forward to a whole new set of improvements and features in 2024!
18 December 2023 2:24pm
It's been awesome and a honor to work on this platform!
Keep up the good work!
Master Project Collaboration/Ideas!
4 November 2023 10:37pm
4 November 2023 10:58pm
My email address: [email protected]
14 December 2023 9:35pm
Hi Zach,
Our organization (SEE Turtles) has a campaign working on the illegal tortoiseshell trade around the world called Too Rare To Wear. We are going to be updating our Global Tortoiseshell Report next year and one of the gaps we have in data is in China, where the illegal trade is now happening most frequently on platforms like WeChat.
We'd be interested in discussing with you if interested in how we might be able to gather some data on this trade in the country. I'm including a couple of links below about the program and the last report and will reach out by email.
-Brad
Watch now - The State of Conservation Technology: 3 Year Trends
13 December 2023 5:25pm
WILDLABS.net Scheduled Website Maintenance
Head of Partnerships
Conservation of Kikuyu Escarpment Forest
1 December 2023 12:38pm
WILDLABS Awards 2024: Supporting accessible, affordable, and effective innovation for nature
1 December 2023 11:00am
WILDLABS Awards 2024: Further Information
1 December 2023 11:00am
WILDLABS AWARDS Webinar
30 November 2023 12:17pm
Wishlist for kit in a field-based Research Station or tech testing space?
27 November 2023 10:41am
28 November 2023 3:25am
Regine Weckauf over on linkedin:
'Little to do with research and tech development, but given how hard it is to attract and retain experienced staff to field based positions, I know it makes a difference how nice the space is. Just because it's the "field", shouldn't mean staff living in basic conditions, regardless of how many times we've been told to see it as a badge of honor. If you have the money, put in nice bathrooms, kitchen, living spaces, and private accommodation. Maybe even a nursery? It creates more local employment opportunities and people genuinely want to visit.'
28 November 2023 2:25pm
Love the idea for in-house gear/supplies! It can be SOO difficult to travel with batteries, electronics parts with airline regs, country policies, etc. and shipping recorders/trail cams/etc. gets VERY (prohibitively) pricey in some countries with customs and taxes. Would be great to have an in-country place to source that kind of equipment.
Housing educational resources related to that tech (in the form of people, print materials, computer tutorials) in-house would be similarly awesome. Particularly/especially in local languages.
Having in-country wet labs as well helps the eDNA/genetics folks, since sample import/export permitting can be (always seems to be?!) a nightmare, so if you can even just do PCR and/or extractions in-country that helps a ton.
In terms of overall field-station-wishlist - honestly, just the promise of continued funding and staff. Every field station I've been to or worked at is in a constant search for enough money to get through the next month/year, because the funding comes in the establish a station but then not to maintain it long-term. It's not sexy for a wishlist per se, but boy is it over-looked and much-needed.
@hikinghack from Dinalab would probably have lots of good insights on this!
29 November 2023 7:59pm
My suggestion would probably be a 3D printer and Solder Station with a stock of common components. With those two things you can solve most problems.
NSERC-CREATE Graduate Programs
27 November 2023 10:36am
Atos and WWF partner up to leverage technology to support biodiversity conservation
27 November 2023 9:32am
Atos & the WWF announced a 3-year strategic partnership to leverage technology to support biodiversity conservation & encourage businesses to decarbonize. 1 of the 4 main initiatives of the partnership is: Atos to develop responsible IT solutions for WWF & its partners.
Freshwater and Community Conservation Remote Externship
27 November 2023 8:31am
ICOTEQ launch TAGRANGER® system of products
23 November 2023 1:25pm
Catch up with The Variety Hour: November 2023
16 November 2023 12:59pm
Have your say: Take the 2023 WILDLABS State of Conservation Technology Survey
15 November 2023 9:20am
The State of Conservation Technology 2023: Five Key Findings
15 November 2023 9:20am
The Ultimate Biodiversity Fact Sheet. 14 stats to convince people about the importance of nature.
9 November 2023 5:10pm
You have probably been there before.
The person in front of you is not convinced that nature is that important.
🎉 Enter the stage: Fact Sheet.
✅ Sources so people can learn more
✅ Easy to save on your phone & use at any time
✅ Never look for powerful stats or arguments again
26 January 2024 8:49am
"Seychelles and South Africa did not allow Starlink to operate"
This is not good, has implications for anti-poaching measures.