With new technologies revolutionizing data collection, wildlife researchers are becoming increasingly able to collect data at much higher volumes than ever before. Now we are facing the challenges of putting this information to use, bringing the science of big data into the conservation arena. With the help of machine learning tools, this area holds immense potential for conservation practices. The applications range from online trafficking alerts to species-specific early warning systems to efficient movement and biodiversity monitoring and beyond.
However, the process of building effective machine learning tools depends upon large amounts of standardized training data, and conservationists currently lack an established system for standardization. How to best develop such a system and incentivize data sharing are questions at the forefront of this work. There are currently multiple AI-based conservation initiatives, including Wildlife Insights and WildBook, that are pioneering applications on this front.
This group is the perfect place to ask all your AI-related questions, no matter your skill level or previous familiarity! You'll find resources, meet other members with similar questions and experts who can answer them, and engage in exciting collaborative opportunities together.
Just getting started with AI in conservation? Check out our introduction tutorial, How Do I Train My First Machine Learning Model? with Daniel Situnayake, and our Virtual Meetup on Big Data. If you're coming from the more technical side of AI/ML, Sara Beery runs an AI for Conservation slack channel that might be of interest. Message her for an invite.
Header Image: Dr Claire Burke / @CBurkeSci
Explore the Basics: AI
Understanding the possibilities for incorporating new technology into your work can feel overwhelming. With so many tools available, so many resources to keep up with, and so many innovative projects happening around the world and in our community, it's easy to lose sight of how and why these new technologies matter, and how they can be practically applied to your projects.
Machine learning has huge potential in conservation tech, and its applications are growing every day! But the tradeoff of that potential is a big learning curve - or so it seems to those starting out with this powerful tool!
To help you explore the potential of AI (and prepare for some of our upcoming AI-themed events!), we've compiled simple, key resources, conversations, and videos to highlight the possibilities:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Everything I know about Machine Learning and Camera Traps, Dan Morris | Resource library, camera traps, machine learning
- Using Computer Vision to Protect Endangered Species, Kasim Rafiq | Machine learning, data analysis, big cats
- Resource: WildID | WildID
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- I made an open-source tool to help you sort camera trap images | Petar Gyurov, Camera Traps
- Batch / Automated Cloud Processing | Chris Nicolas, Acoustic Monitoring
- Looking for help with camera trapping for Jaguars: Software for species ID and database building | Carmina Gutierrez, AI for Conservation
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- How do I get started using machine learning for my camera traps? | Sara Beery, Tech Tutors
- How do I train my first machine learning model? | Daniel Situnayake, Tech Tutors
- Big Data in Conservation | Dave Thau, Dan Morris, Sarah Davidson, Virtual Meetups
Want to know more about AI, or have your specific machine learning questions answered by experts in the WILDLABS community? Make sure you join the conversation in our AI for Conservation group!
- @Kyle_Birchard
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Building tools for research and management of insect populations
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- @diego_ellis_soto
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University of California & California Academy of Sciences
Biodiversity |Technology | Socio-Ecological Systems | Wildlife Ecology | Remote Sensing | Conservation | K12STEM-education | Music | diegoellissoto.org
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- @dka32
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I am a highly motivated individual with a background in Natural Resources Management. I am a conservationist who desire to make an impact in the field of conservation using technology.
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Retired Engineer / UAV interests / Photographer
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- @ColleenEarthScape
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- @Alawa
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Passionate wildlife and biodiversity conservationist
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- @mattaudette
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Software Tester and Test Automator at Wildlife Protection Solutions
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- @Rutwik
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- @williams
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I am a conservationist specializing in endangered species, particularly vultures. As the Endangered Species Conservation Coordinator/Co-Founder at Biota Conservation Hub Foundation (BiotaCHF), I have conducted extensive research/conservation of vultures and other water birds.
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- @ARobillard
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A conservation data scientist and field ecologist with broad interest in the application of machine learning and population genetics to the conservation of threatened species. Alex has conducted field studies throughout central and south America, the Caribbean, and North America.
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- @Joynyamshangi
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Careers
The intern will support CI in exploring and implementing AI solutions that address conservation challenges. We are looking for someone familiar with modern AI technologies (genAI, AI agents, LLMs, foundation models, etc...
2 June 2025
Article
I search for an external reviewer for my MSc thesis, which focuses on using temperature sensors and deep learning to detect avian incubation behavior (on- and off-bouts).
1 June 2025
Article
HawkEars: a high-performance bird sound classifier for Canada
Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute
HawkEars is a deep learning model designed specifically to recognize the calls of 328 Canadian bird species and 13 amphibians.
13 May 2025
Link
Survey on Earth Observation in Wildlife Ecology
Helena Wehner
Hi together, I am working on detecting causalities between land surface dynamics and animal movement by using satellite-based earth observation data. As this is might be your expertise I kindly ask for your support...
8 May 2025
Link
Weed-AI: Supporting the AI revolution in weed control
Amber Balfour-Cunningham
Weeds, by definition, are plants in the wrong place but Weed-AI is helping put weed image data in the right place. Weed-AI is an open source, searchable, weeds image data platform designed to facilitate the research and...
7 May 2025
Careers
Global Science Data Management and AI Graduate Intern
World Wildlife Fund
The intern will help the Global Science team expand our understanding of nature-based solutions through artificial intelligence (AI) and support our efforts to create a model for data collection and analysis that can...
18 April 2025
Article
Driving off-highway vehicles (OHVs), which contributes to habitat degradation and fragmentation, is a common recreational activity in the United States and other parts of the world, particularly in desert environments...
8 April 2025
Article
Nature Tech for Biodiversity Sector Map launched!
Carly Batist and 1 more
Conservation International is proud to announce the launch of the Nature Tech for Biodiversity Sector Map, developed in partnership with the Nature Tech Collective!
1 April 2025
Funding
$3 millions of funding for NGO in Brazil using AI for conservation / $ 3 milhões em financiamento para ONGs no Brasil que usam IA para conservação!
1 April 2025
Funding
Multiple grants
Frank van der Most
I have been a bit distracted the past months by my move from Costa Rica to Spain ( all went well, thank you, I just miss the rain forest and the Ticos ) and have to catch up on funding calls. Because I still have little...
28 March 2025
Funding
AI Weather Quest
Alex Rood
The AI Weather Quest, organised by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), is an ambitious international competition designed to harness artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in...
25 March 2025
InsectSet459 - the first large-scale open dataset of insect sounds, featuring 26,399 audio clips from 459 species of Orthoptera and Cicadidae.
24 March 2025
June 2025
event
Maximilian Sittinger
event
Nalini
July 2025
October 2025
event
Lacey Hughey and 3 more
73 Products
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| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi WILDLABS Community,I’m Simon Juma from Kenya, working on a project to track and manage Red-billed Quelea birds, which... |
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AI for Conservation, Sensors | 2 months 2 weeks ago | |
| Hi everyone, I’m excited to become a member of Wild Lab! I’m currently working on my master’s thesis, focusing on dormouse conservation. My research explores the behavioral... |
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AI for Conservation, Animal Movement, Camera Traps, Citizen Science, Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Early Career, Geospatial | 2 months 3 weeks ago | |
| That's amazing thanks so much! |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools, Early Career | 2 months 3 weeks ago | |
| Thanks again for the interesting discussion everyone! Just a note that while I touched on it in my opening post above, there were still questions in this thread about what... |
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Open Source Solutions, AI for Conservation, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Software Development | 2 months 4 weeks ago | |
| Thanks @VAR1 great insights! Funny you mentioned the honey thing, @hikinghack said the same in response on the GOSH forum. I think the point I'm trying to make with the vegan... |
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Open Source Solutions, AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Geospatial, Software Development | 2 months 4 weeks ago | |
| Linkedin mainly. iNaturalist and eBird ofc but these are more communities than real social networks. But, and this is a real advice, a good RSS feed reader with all your... |
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AI for Conservation, Community Base | 2 months 4 weeks ago | |
| Hi Maureen, thanks a lot for this. Seemed more or less perfect so I applied :)Also didn't realise there was a slack community so I'll be scanning that too... |
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AI for Conservation | 3 months ago | |
| Hey everyone,On Monday, we are starting the test phase of our first MVP version!We are looking for a limited number of testers and still... |
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AI for Conservation | 3 months ago | |
| Hi Dan, Not right now but I can envision many uses. A key problem in RS is data streams for validation and training of ML models, its really not yet a solved problem. Any... |
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Emerging Tech, AI for Conservation, Animal Movement, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Camera Traps, Connectivity, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Geospatial, Sensors | 3 months 1 week ago | |
| Thanks @eugenegalaxy . Much appreciated and I will go through this thoroughly! |
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AI for Conservation | 3 months ago | |
| Hey Bob, thanks for the kind words! Your articles on Winterberry Wildlife have really been a big inspiration for me! There are extremely limited numbers of articles on trial... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 3 months 1 week ago | |
| This is probably the most realistic one I've seen made by this tool (stable-difussion v1.5) |
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AI for Conservation | 3 months 1 week ago |
Call for Nominations: Tusk Conservation Awards
3 March 2020 12:00am
Competition: Plastic Data Challenge
Ellie Warren
3 March 2020 12:00am
Hawai'i Conservation Conference
Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance
28 February 2020 12:00am
Competition: The Artisanal Mining Grand Challenge
26 February 2020 12:00am
Listening to Nature: The Emerging Field of Bioacoustics
24 February 2020 12:00am
Team for Building of ML app for horse identification and conservation
20 February 2020 11:09pm
HWC Tech Challenge Update: Thermal Elephant Alert System
17 February 2020 12:00am
ICEI2020: 11th International Conference on Ecological Informatics
ICEI 2020
14 February 2020 12:00am
Seafood fund seeks ideas for innovation projects up to £250k
11 February 2020 12:00am
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Recording: Acoustic Monitoring
WILDLABS Team
5 February 2020 12:00am
AI for camera trap public data
17 December 2019 9:20pm
A New Cloud Platform Unveils the Most Diverse Camera Trap Database in the World
17 December 2019 12:00am
[ARCHIVED] Workshop on Deep Learning Methods and Appliocations for Animal Re-Identification
25 November 2019 6:24pm
WACV2020 AI for Animal Re-ID: Deep Learning Methods and Applications for Animal Re-Identification
25 November 2019 12:00am
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Recording: Drones
WILDLABS Team
9 November 2019 12:00am
Camera Trapping: Incredibly Useful Resources List
5 November 2019 12:00am
Who wants to learn Python? Courses to get you started coding
2 May 2016 3:13pm
1 March 2019 9:20am
Hello everyone what are you wating for..
All US, UK, India users can enroll courses from Intellipaat (the largest IT trainng company)
check some of thier superb training list:
29 October 2019 4:52pm
Chuck's Python for Everyone course is available these days at www.py4e.com, and he's also created a course called Web Apps for Everyone www.wa4e.com. Both excellent resources, and he's a strong proponent for (and creator of) open source educational tools in general.
Lucy
Plant-Powered Camera Trap Breakthrough
15 October 2019 12:00am
Using Artificial Intelligence to Track Birds’ Dark-of-Night Migrations
9 October 2019 12:00am
Camera Trap Technology Symposium (Recordings): Bringing Developers and Users Together
2 September 2019 12:00am
ICCB 2019: 5 Key Discussions about the Future of Conservation Tech
21 August 2019 12:00am
Conservation biologists find new applications for AI tools
5 August 2019 2:57pm
Automated Identification of Indonesian Rhinos
27 July 2019 12:00am
[ARCHIVED] Position: UI/UX Machine Learning Engineer
8 July 2019 11:27pm
[ARCHIVED] Position: Senior Computer Vision Research Engineer
8 July 2019 10:42pm
Hello buzzing World!
7 July 2019 6:55pm
ML at the Edge
28 June 2019 8:16am
Meetup: Machine Learning/AI on Earth Observation Data (23 July, London)
21 June 2019 12:00am
New open data site for fisheries
10 June 2019 7:17pm
Workshop & Challenges on Computer Vision for Wildlife Conservation (CVWC) at ICCV 2019
5 June 2019 6:51am
31 August 2017 9:06am
A couple of years ago I completed the Coursera course Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) with Charles Severance. I found it really well paced and well taught. He's a very personable tutor, and has also written a free book Python for Everybody, available as a PDF.
I found the Coursera course on R Programming with Roger Peng to be more difficult to follow, but I'm not sure whether that was down to the teaching style or the language itself. For R, I'd definitely recommend the best place to get started is swirl - Learn R, in R!
Happy coding