Deepak Sathyanarayan
- @DeepakSathyanarayan
- | he/his
Hi Everyone, I am new to the WildLabs community and relatively new to conservation technology. I have been working in this space since 2018 (marine and coral focused with NOAA), but I also work on robotics and AI for space, defense, and health tech.
As I consult with organizations in these sectors, I've seen many similarities across these domains in terms of technology needs, design requirements, operating challenges, and business startup challenges. Despite the vast differences in funding and culture between these sectors, these technical and business similarities still persist across organizations of all sizes in these sectors.
I've noticed more conservation groups opting to strategically apply their technology to other sectors to either 1) diversify their portfolio for financial resilience, or 2) secure non-conservation funding to accelerate development toward conservation. This second need has been coming up more, at least in the US, given recent federal administration changes. I believe there have been successes in companies accessing defense, health, or aerospace funding sources to develop technology for conservation.
To rapidly accelerate innovation for conservation to meet urgent needs, this dual-/multi-use strategy should be considered more systematically.
I have shared this discussion to a few different groups here at WildLabs that I think would be leveraging or creating dual-/multi-use technologies for conservation.
I am curious what everyone's thoughts, experiences, and challenges have been with continuing our conservation mission by 1) leveraging other non-conservation funding sources for conservation tech, 2) adapting existing technology from other sectors.
2 April 2025 3:07am
Overlap for agriculture is an easy dual-use.
We have been funded by USDA NRCS for land management, as well as USDA SBIR for pollinator management technology. This technology is the same as wild insect trail cameras and wild animal habitat management tools.
I've also looked at laboratory and pet animal welfare to apply to field station temporary captive holding for small species management paradigm.
In that vein, I've been funded for captive animal welfare technology work, which is applicable to wild animal breed, rehab, and release work.
2 April 2025 8:33am
Nice that you bring this up. I was having this conversation just yesterday. The context was conversation tech that might also have defence value, rather than the other way around. Then a question that came up was "Maybe defence don't want non-defence people involved in things of value to them?".
What's your view on that? Do you think that defence can play nicely with conservation or companies that are not defence through and through ?
I do think that with defence spending taking more and more of our tax dollars win-win for defence and civil goals should be a desired outcome.
3 April 2025 11:31am
Hi Deepak,
Thanks for starting this important and insightful conversation!
The great majority of conservation tech has been co-opted from other sectors e.g., trail cams were originally developed/used by hunters, drones/satellites came from defense, recorders/microphones from media production, eDNA builds on informatics pipelines developed for human genomics. We're gleaning the benefits of the current genAI arms race that big tech is going through as more is open-sourced and made available through interactive platforms.
One area of overlap I've seen is biologging with pet tech - using e.g., GPS collars or tags to track wildlife but often it's similar tech within the pet industry.
But conservation is notoriously way behind the curve on adopting innovations from tech & AI (compared to other fields like education, medicine, etc.), so I'm wondering how we can close that lag moving forward. I don't have answers on how other than just staying abreast of what's happening in the wider world and disseminating that info back to conservation orgs/practitioners. But there also I think needs to be better communication between on-the-ground practitioners and developers so that solutions ARE purpose-built for conservation. Right now there are a lot of people coming up with solutions without a clearly defined problem, or re-inventing the wheel and duplicating something that's already been done rather than building upon existing solutions to make them better. I think WILDLABS (and the Inventory) has done a great job of bringing folks together so that people are aware of what everyone is working on and facilitating those interdisciplinary connections/discussions.
But it's an ongoing challenge for sure and I definitely don't have the answers! But just my two cents on things at the moment. Curious to hear what others think!
-Carly
13 April 2025 3:49am
Important US defense opportunity: looks like the DoD is standing up a portal to funnel cross-industry technologies and capabilities to defense applications. The DoD Digital OnRamp platform will be undergoing a beta-release later this year:
I take this as a good sign that the defense sector and US DoD is open to collaboration and wants to infuse cross-industry tech. I personally ran a dual-use robotics company where I transitioned tech both ways between defense and conservation programs. I believe there are strategies we can leverage to replicate in other organizations, and this is an opening to support conservation tech with US DoD opportunities.
There are also programs like OneHealth that will require human and ecological health technologies for successful deployment globally. There may be opportunities to integrate conservation tech there, as well.
I agree with the comment that there is a massive gap (lag) in technology adoption within conservation. Part of it is cultural (don’t want to take risk), part is education (need skillset to adapt these technologies safely), and part is financial (tech is developed in more highly funded ecosystems). The cutting of US funding for direct conservation and health efforts is certainly not helping the acquisition of talent and resources. It would behoove us to integrate with defense and deeptech networks to reduce tech transfer lag.
Part of the problem, and solution, I believe, is marketing of conservation. Reframing and relabeling (like how US is forced to do for DEI) may be an immediate pathway.
Constance Woodman