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!
MSc in AI for Sustainable Development at UCL
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 1 Groups
- @aniyaz533
- | Niyaz
A keen willdlife biologist looking forward to work on Otters ecology in Himalayan landscape
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 5 Groups
I'm a computer engineer with a master's degree in Artificial Intelligence, I love nature and wildlife
- 0 Resources
- 4 Discussions
- 2 Groups
- @tmcgrath
- | He / Him
Geographer, Program Manager, Engineering Manager
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 11 Groups
A Marine Conservationist based in Malaysia
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 5 Groups
- @lqmeyers
- | he/him
Graduate Student Researcher interested in computer vision, agro-ecology, and sustainability.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 4 Groups
Snow Leopard Trust
- 0 Resources
- 44 Discussions
- 6 Groups
- @jcturn3
- | He/Him
Colorado State University
I am a graduate student at Colorado State University working to develop novel acoustic technology for remotely monitoring wildlife.
- 0 Resources
- 14 Discussions
- 3 Groups
- @KiaraHaylock
- | She/Her
PhD in Animal Ecology and Behavioural Physiology. Interested in the movement, behavioural and physiological responses of animals to environmental variability.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 13 Groups
20+ years traveler and management consultant turned tech founder and conservationist. Founder & CEO of ZAMBEZI ZERØ; super intelligence to safeguard biodiversity.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 15 Groups
Product Designer focusing on a project about marine mammal conservation.
- 0 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 2 Groups
- @eaglass25
- | she/her
Fauna & Flora
Programme Officer at the Conservation Leadership Programme
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 3 Groups
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
Careers
Naturalis is looking for a postdoc in AI for Ultrasonic Bioacoustic Monitoring
24 March 2025
Funding
The Compute for Climate Fellowship is a global R&D funding program that empowers climate tech startups to leverage advanced cloud computing and AI in the fight against climate change.
22 March 2025
June 2025
event
Maximilian Sittinger
event
Nalini
July 2025
October 2025
event
Lacey Hughey and 3 more
73 Products
Recently updated products
16 Products
Recently updated products
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech, Sensors | 1 day 1 hour ago | ||
| We’re excited to launch our WILDLABS-funded project to adapt open-source recording hardware and AI tools to help monitor amphibians, with... |
|
Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Latin America Community, Open Source Solutions | 2 days 18 hours ago | |
| We’re excited to announce that Deep Voice has received a 2025 Wildlabs Award to develop a public, web-based platform for marine mammal... |
|
Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Marine Conservation | 2 days 19 hours ago | |
| True, the US ecosystem is a challenging space right now, for basically all sectors. We should not let the US chaos prevent us from engaging with opportunities in other... |
|
AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Connectivity, Drones, Emerging Tech, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Marine Conservation, Sensors | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
| Fascinating article, combining machine learning and acoustical signals to correlate coral reef health.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... |
|
Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Marine Conservation | 2 years 11 months ago | |
| MIT has this Moo Deng-based fun challenge! More seriously it relates to AI and human-nature interaction. I imagine people on Wildlabs would... |
|
AI for Conservation | 1 week ago | |
| Hi Ethan, It's indeed a competitive area. My advice for you (and anybody else seeking a PhD supervisor)...Do background research on each individual potential supervisor and always... |
|
Early Career, AI for Conservation, Animal Movement, Climate Change | 1 week 4 days ago | |
| Hi Nick,At Wildlife.ai, from the other side of the world, we would be happy to chat with you. PM if interested Victor |
|
AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech | 1 week 2 days ago | |
| Hi everyone,What should we share or demo about Software Quality Assurance? Alex Saunders and I, the two Software QA people at Wildlife Protection Solutions (WPS) are going to... |
|
Software Development, AI for Conservation, Open Source Solutions | 1 week 4 days ago | |
| My name is Frank Short and I am a PhD Candidate at Boston University in Biological Anthropology. I am currently doing fieldwork in Indonesia using machine-learning powered passive... |
|
Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Animal Movement, Data management and processing tools, Early Career, Emerging Tech, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Protected Area Management Tools, Software Development | 3 weeks 1 day ago | |
| This looks like a great application, thank you! I wonder if they are planning to run this study in future years. |
|
AI for Conservation | 3 weeks 3 days ago | |
|
|
Latin America Community, Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Drones, Early Career | 4 weeks ago |
GWP Webinar Recording: Using SMART at scale for effective wildlife protection
21 May 2019 12:00am
WILDLABS TECH HUB Showcase
WILDLABS Team
17 May 2019 12:00am
Meet the WILDLABS TECH HUB Winners
13 May 2019 12:00am
Huge appetite for data trusts, according to new ODI research
15 April 2019 12:00am
Call for Papers: Data Mining and AI for Conservation Workshop at KDD 2019
15 April 2019 12:00am
Call for Papers: Thematic issue of Environment Conservation on ‘Conservation Artificial Intelligence’
26 March 2019 10:12am
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Low Cost, Open-Source Solutions
WILDLABS Team
18 March 2019 12:00am
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Our Favourites from 2019
3 March 2019 12:00am
Conserving the Sumatran and Javan Rhino
15 January 2019 7:39pm
24 February 2019 1:28am
Hi Claire,
At the BearID Project, we are working on a similar problem for brown bears. We are currently using machine learning methods developed for human facial recognition (like Google FaceNet). We got some ok initial results, but now we are running up against small data issues. The method for human faces were trained with millions of images of hundreds of thousandes on individuals. We have a few thousand images of about a hundred individuals. We plan to investigate other methods in the future.
It will be great to keep in touch to see what methods you will be using.
Ed
24 February 2019 1:38am
Hi Colin,
At the BearID Project, we are working on a similar problem for brown bears. We are currently using machine learning methods developed for human facial recognition (like Google FaceNet). We got some ok initial results, but now we are running up against small data issues. The method for human faces were trained with millions of images of hundreds of thousandes on individuals. We have a few thousand images of about a hundred individuals. We plan to investigate other methods in the future.
The last time I talked to WildMe, the identification algorithms were based on matching unique patterns. We didn't think this would be directly applicable for brown bears as they don't have a lot of clearly identifiable markings. Have you developed other identification algorithms?
Ed
Responsible AI for Conservation?
11 February 2019 6:22pm
21 February 2019 8:17am
Hi Jaishanker
Absolutely - the overlap between image-based and sound-based analyses is increasing, and consistent terminology will no doubt help us share info.
Are you using ML in SODA for automated identification of sounds? If so, how are you determining if a given classifier is performing well?
Thanks
Ollie
21 February 2019 11:08am
Hello Ollie,
SODA is a recently launched suite. It is in the development phase. We have with us call libraries with multiple (40+) calls for 10- 12 species of birds. A research scholar is on the job for classifying at the species level.
Our interest is equally on separating the different sonic components (as stated in https://www.wildlabs.net/community/thread/666). It is different from the link shared in my previous reply. This is where I see the confluence of objectives.
As a TEAM, I believe, we can address the individual objectives faster.
regards
jaishanker
21 February 2019 9:13pm
Hi Ollie,
Great article, thank you! I mostly work with responsible AI in other contexts, at Doteveryone.org.uk and the Trust & Technology Initiative at the University of Cambridge, so don't have much to offer here, although I am very interested in the topic. I appreciate your point that many of the consumer data issues highlighted in the 'popular' responsible AI discourse aren't relevant to conservation (some of us have been gathering 'responsible tech' / 'ethical tech' resources in a shared doc, and there's essentially nothing there for conservation specifically - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SN6hYeKe3eRK6x9D0Sr7GpCA4nirpyo3u68xG1A6NDs/edit ). However there might be some links with humanitarian data practices, which are touched on by the Responsible Data folks at https://responsibledata.io and https://www.fabriders.net/data-literacy-consortium/ or in this recent article https://asecondmouse.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/instability-forecasting-models-seven-ethical-considerations/
Best,
Laura
Using Swiss AI and Drones to Count African Wildlife
18 February 2019 12:00am
ChimpFace: Facial recognition to combat wildlife trafficking
6 February 2019 12:00am
UK’s first data trusts to tackle illegal wildlife trade and food waste
31 January 2019 12:00am
The Ecosulis Rewilding Tech Challenge
14 January 2019 12:00am
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Big Data in Conservation
WILDLABS Team
27 November 2018 12:00am
Canopy cameras shed new light on monkey business in Brazil
22 November 2018 12:00am
A technologist's journey to protect wildlife: The reality and potential of conservation technology (recorded talk)
22 November 2018 12:00am
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup: Networked Sensors for Security and HWC Prevention
WILDLABS Team
12 November 2018 12:00am
Tusk Conservation Lecture 2018: Ted Schmitt
Tusk
15 October 2018 12:00am
Biology Undergrad Attempts Automated Species Recognition Using MacBook Air and Google
1 October 2018 12:00am
How to share data on species to help conserve them… whilst avoiding them being exploited by poachers
20 August 2018 12:00am
Ocean Hack: San Francisco, 10-11th September, 2018
One Ocean Collab
20 August 2018 12:00am
Thermal Sensor Project Update: Testing with live animals at the San Diego Zoo
27 July 2018 12:00am
31 March 2023 2:15pm
$90K in grants from the Con X Tech Prize
11 June 2018 12:00am
Webinar: Artificial Intelligence for Earth, Microsoft Research
Eye on Earth Alliance
23 April 2018 12:00am
HWC Tech Challenge: Thermopile Sensor Project
19 April 2018 12:00am
BES Guide to Reproducible Code
27 March 2018 2:50pm
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge 2018: Our Top 10
3 March 2018 12:00am
Congratulations to Zoohackathon winners, team ODINN!
6 December 2017 12:00am
FIT Cheetahs
4 December 2017 12:00am
23 January 2019 10:12pm
Hello Claire,
Engineer at Wild Me here. We would love to start a conversation about a Wildbook for rhinos.
Lets talk about citizen science and computer vision for identification possibilities. I'm curious about your current data set and the identification tools you are using as a starting point. I'm happy to talk here, or you can email our team at services@wildme.org.