Hi Wildlabbers,

It's already time for more weekly tweet highlights! 

First, we were excited to see Season 1 Tech Tutor's Sara Beery getting tweeted about the MegaDetector in action! 

Yay #MegaDetector!! Vertically aligned animals was one of the things we targeted with the v4 release, great to see that it helped https://t.co/4kW9blGQZ8

— Sara Beery (@sarameghanbeery) November 19, 2020

Next, we loved seeing another Season 1 Tech Tutor, Daniel Situnayake repping his episode in this tweet about some very fun backyard birdwatching AI!

The @BirdBuddy_ is a super cute AI bird feeder that recognizes birds by their image or their song. It would be even cooler if inference happened on-device!

p.s. to train your own birdsong recognizer, see my @WILDLABSNET tutorial:https://t.co/3gl2MJNm1Nhttps://t.co/oTaC3BxOZe

— Daniel Situnayake #BlackLivesMatter (@dansitu) November 19, 2020

Community member Shah Selbe shared an article about this unique sensor deployment strategy involving drones and darts - what do you guys think of using this system in the field??

Sensor-equipped darts shot from drones is definitely not a conservation technology deployment approach I’ve thought of before. https://t.co/i4C4h7oLxD

— Shah Selbe (@shahselbe) November 17, 2020

And lastly, we can't NOT mention that we celebrated WILDLABS' fifth anniversary this week!

Happy anniversary to WILDLABS! For five years, we've seen incredible collaborations and successes come out of this community, and we can't wait to see what we can build and accomplish together in #tech4wildlife in the next five years! We're just getting started.

— WILDLABS Community (@WILDLABSNET) November 18, 2020

Tweet us or post with your favorite community memories from the past five years!

-Ellie

 

Happy Friday, Wildlabbers! 

This was a big week for #tech4wildlife announcements and resources on Twitter - here are just a few of our favorites:

Audiomoth got even easier to use - great news for our Bioacoustics community!

1. We are excited to release the new #AudioMoth 1.5.0 firmware, which saves your configurations even when batteries are removed. Enabling fieldwork-friendly time configuration, using an acoustic chime to set the AudioMoth clock from a smartphone app https://t.co/G7zBKaghFt pic.twitter.com/M8o858UfUg

— OpenAcousticDevices (@OpenAcoustics) November 23, 2020

ZSL gave us a glimpse of their Instant Detect 2 satellite camera and sensor system:

#InstantDetect2 is starting to look really good. Next year should be very exciting!#Tech4wildlife https://t.co/ZfmlNVivvF

— SamSeccombe (@SamSeccombe) November 24, 2020

Our friend Alasdair Davies shared his work creating sustainably made, recycled satellite tags:

A highlight of my career this one. I didn't ever think I'd get to join a National Geographic expedition @InsideNatGeo turning 500ml water bottles into satellite tags with @HeatherKoldewey @EmilyDuncan34 @Imogennapper and others https://t.co/iPCAwBOBAV

— Alasdair Davies (@Al2kA) December 3, 2020

The Snow Leopard Trust team shared this great resource on the ethics of camera trapping when it comes to capturing human images:

You set up #cameratraps to detect #snowleopards, but cameras detect this. What will you do?
1. Report it?
2. Delete it?
3. Blur and share it?
4. Archive it?
Read on as we discuss the ethical tight-rope of dealing with human images in @AER_ESE_BES: https://t.co/H9MfIyccgp pic.twitter.com/O37bOBA6mh

— Koustubh Sharma (@koustubh_sharma) November 25, 2020

And lastly, if you follow our annual #tech4wildlife Photo Challenge, you'll know that we're big fans of whale photos. So obviously we loved this post from Emma Vogel!

And that's a wrap on our two week research cruise! We successfully deployed both satellite and archival #Biologging tags, as well as collecting lot of #biopsy, #photoID, #eDNA and #acoustic data. It's great to be part of such exciting collaborative research on #whales in Norway! pic.twitter.com/ZcEbXVlz7H

— Emma Vogel (@efvogel) November 30, 2020

Hi all,

I've put together a short list (below) that I've pulled from the Slack channel related to long term and short term projects that were noted or posted.

It's clear that one need is to identify if a quarterly meeting (to see where various projects are vs start anything new) is needed, or that we see if anyone in the community is able fill a voluntary co-ordination role to check up on various projects. One thing at the back of my mind is to look at this from the perspective that if new fires start at scale what could we have in place, or how could we react. That may drive forward a few ideas and help us to focus on what we can do in the short term as there are plenty of project discussions around physical water feeders etc.

Here's what I got from the Slack channel;

Long term

- Work with Conservation Volunteers Australia to establish projects suitable for volunteers, especially things that can be done remotely, but also out in the field.

- Develop a small but skilled and experienced "brains trust" that can provide input for any environmental project / organisation which needs 'tech smarts' but doesn't have them in house.

Short term

- Australian Citizen Science Association - short term priorities are replacing lost nest boxes and getting more she-oaks in the ground. That has to start happening soon to be useful for the 2020 breeding season (the boxes, not the trees obviously).

- Continue to assess recovery program staff needs and the recovery team's priorities

- Zooniverse want to test ALA data sharing, using air quality data can involve remote volunteers without danger

- Setting up field cameras in burnt areas, to identify remaining wildlife or ferals (Zooniverse, ALA/DigiVol)

- Recording wildlife water point or feed locations and monitoring for maintenance, ie refills. (Kobo, other app?

- Setting up shelter tunnels in burnt areas - and recording locations, with possible addition of field cameras (Zooniverse, ALA/Digivol).

****

 

Hello everyone. I hope you're well and your friends and families are safe during the Covid-19 crisis. I know that many of us are out of sync during the shut downs around the world so it isn't the easiest of times to think back on the bush fires, but also at the back of mind is the recurrence again and the recovery still underway / getting ahead of time with solutions. There is however a new opportunity that has come to light. The Australian Government has opened an application form for a $100k - £1m grant, with the desc;

The Wildlife and Habitat Bushfire Recovery Program will provide funding to support the immediate survival and long-term recovery and resilience for fire-affected Australian animals, plants, ecological communities and other natural assets and their cultural values for Indigenous Australians.

This may be the opportunity we need to move forward and progress some of the ideas we all noted. We will need Oz group WildLABS orgs and contacts on the ground, but if feel you have the capacity at this time to support a submission and be a part of it, then get in touch.