Ten years ago, we couldn't have imagined how tools like machine learning, eDNA, and satellites would advance and transform conservation work. Now technology is advancing faster than ever, and as tools become smaller, lighter, and more affordable, it's vital to have a space where community members can discuss the next big thing, share ideas, compare tool options, and tell the story of their experiences - positive, negative, and anything in between - while using new technologies.
In 2021, the WILDLABS State of Conservation Tech report detailed what tools show the most promise according to community members, as well as what tools are currently seen as the most effective. And as new tools enter the field, we're excited to see how this data will change over time, and how this group grows over time as well.
Our State of Conservation Tech research also discusses something called the "Hype Cycle" - the pattern that occurs when a new technology bursts onto the scene, promises to be an exciting solution, encounters challenges as new users adopt the tool and put it into practice beyond just theory, and eventually settles into its most effective state as users acquire the right skills to use it to its actual potential. Machine learning, one of the most promising technologies, is currently in the middle of its own hype cycle, and we see community members working through their own hurdles to incorporate ML into their work effectively. Despite what you may think, this Hype Cycle can also be positive for tech development, as it means that users have big ideas for new tools, and with the right resources and skills, they can work toward bringing those ideas to life. And as our community members experiences the Hype Cycle for various tools at their own paces, we hope this group will also serve as a place to discuss that process and overcome hurdles together.
Ready to discover new possibilities? Join our Emerging Tech group now and get to know your forward-thinking conservation tech peers!
Header photo: Internet of Elephants
No showcases have been added to this group yet.
- @lvgliarose
- | she/her
Bat Conservation Trust
Research Manager at Bat Conservation Trust
- 0 Resources
- 8 Discussions
- 12 Groups
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 6 Groups
- @sehuebner
- | she/her
Wildlife Ecologist and Program Manager at the Smithsonian Institution
- 0 Resources
- 3 Discussions
- 9 Groups
I have mixed experiences from 20+ years doing SATCOM and other IT roles with the US Army. I also have 4 years experience working in the marine environment doing forage fish spawning research. My goal is to advance my abilities in AI to bring into the realm of wildlife research.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 5 Groups
- @diego_ellis_soto
- | he/him
University of California & California Academy of Sciences
Biodiversity |Technology | Socio-Ecological Systems | Wildlife Ecology | Remote Sensing | Conservation | K12STEM-education | Music | diegoellissoto.org
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 20 Groups
- @Alawa
- | She/Her
Passionate wildlife and biodiversity conservationist
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 24 Groups
- @mattaudette
- | he, him, his
Software Tester and Test Automator at Wildlife Protection Solutions
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 24 Groups
- @tmcgrath
- | He / Him
Geographer, Program Manager, Engineering Manager
- 0 Resources
- 1 Discussions
- 11 Groups
- @kricherds
- | she/her
Technologist. Civic Science Fellow & Data Inclusion Specialist at OEDP.
- 0 Resources
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- 14 Groups
Ol Pejeta Conservancy
- 0 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 8 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
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- 15 Groups
Article
Introducing The Debrief: Season 1
Stephanie O'Donnell
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
Careers
Lead Data Engineer - Climate Solutions, Open Earth
Esther Githinji
Have you created a successful career in tech and are ready to do something good with your skills and experience? If yes, then join Open Earth's Earthshot mission to build open source digital systems and solutions to...
25 October 2023
Careers
ZSL Research Fellow (x3 roles)
Zoological Society London (ZSL)
The Institute of Zoology (IoZ), the research division of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), is seeking to fill three new permanent positions by recruiting outstanding early-career researchers as Research Fellows (...
20 October 2023
Link
Made available by the Digital Disruption and the Future of Conservation project team at Unearthodox, the toolkit provides conservation practitioners with a comprehensive introduction to Web 3.0 and AI concepts and their...
22 September 2023
Article
In case you missed it... (no. 1)
Stephanie O'Donnell
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
Link
Alibaba Cloud's Geo Fencing System in the Mara
Esther Githinji
Wilson Sairowua, Tracking Manager at Mara Elephant Project (MEP) narrates how tech4change, Alibaba Cloud's Geo Fencing System paired with collaring has helped to mitigate human-elephant conflict across Maasai Mara and...
1 September 2023
Article
Fast grants program for ML and interspecies communication
Maddie Cusimano
Earth Species Project is partnering with the Footprint Coalition to provide grants for research at the intersection of ML and interspecies communication, including applications to conservation.
23 August 2023
Article
Human-Elephant Conflict Tech Solution in Tsavo: NdovuCare
Esther Githinji and 1 more
Read our interview with Sandra Maryanne, a young conservation tech innovator raised in Taita, Ivarenyi with first-hand experience on the challenges of human-elephant conflict within her community. To address this, she...
7 August 2023
Article
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Judges' Panel Honorees
WILDLABS Team
Please join us in celebrating this year’s top #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge Honorees as chosen by our panel of leading conservation organization judges, and enjoy the story contained within these entries about how our...
4 August 2023
Article
Join us as we count down the WILDLABS community's honorees in the first-ever #Tech4Wildlife Community Choice Awards!
3 August 2023
Article
Sustained Effort: When There's No Time To Wait
Isobel Ashbey
In this article from Isobel Ashbey, she shares Cambridge Consultants’ method for thinking of sustainability as a framework that addresses every level of product development.
26 July 2023
Article
Renew Capital launches Renew Venture Lab
Lucas Robinson
Renew Capital is sourcing startups for our next Super Angels Fund and we are hoping to close investments in 20 startups before the end of December 2023.
19 July 2023
August 2025
event
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March 2026
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| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi all,Thank you so much for sharing the resources, these are quite insightfull |
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Emerging Tech | 2 years 5 months ago | |
| Hi @Sicily_Fiennes,Over the past several years, I have explored how to design engaging and useful tools for the exploration of audio recording to locate calls of a particular bird... |
+8
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Conservation Tech Training and Education, Emerging Tech | 2 years 6 months ago | |
| Hi Titus,If the usual syntactic foam sources aren't available, an option may be to add an empty dry housing or use a larger housing for the BRUV, just to provide the buoyancy.You... |
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Camera Traps, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 2 years 6 months ago | |
| My original background is in ecology and conservation, and am now in the elected leadership of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware which convenes researchers developing open... |
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AI for Conservation, Animal Movement, Camera Traps, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Drones, Emerging Tech, Sensors | 2 years 6 months ago | |
| Hello All - @sarabeery et Al have just put a pre-print out on their educational insights into teaching Computer Vision to ecologists. I... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Early Career, Emerging Tech | 2 years 7 months ago | |
| intrested. |
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Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Early Career, Emerging Tech | 2 years 7 months ago | |
| Thanks Alice, it does! |
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Early Career, Emerging Tech | 2 years 8 months ago | |
| I just came across this interesting paper in which seismic monotoring of animals like elephants was mentioned. This is the study refered to:Cheers,Lars |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Emerging Tech, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Human-Wildlife Coexistence, Geospatial, Sensors | 2 years 8 months ago | |
| Hi Steph. Would be interested also. |
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Animal Movement, Community Base, Connectivity, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Geospatial | 2 years 8 months ago | |
| Hey Sol, The only way for you to collect information from a GPS tag attached to a FAD is if that tag transmits that data to the drone. Unfortunately most receiver packages... |
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Drones, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 2 years 8 months ago | |
| Out of curiosity, what are the similarities/differences between your platform and other image classification ones such as Wildlife Insights, WildID, ZambaCloud? I don't mean that... |
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AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech | 2 years 9 months ago | |
| Hi Everyone,We chose sigfox becuase it seems to have better range and is plug-play, whereas LoRa requires more custom programming and updating. Getting a gateway cost us $... |
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Animal Movement, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Camera Traps, Connectivity, Emerging Tech, Sensors | 2 years 9 months ago |
Roddenberry Foundation’s Catalyst Fund
4 October 2022 11:13am
New paper: Battery-free wireless imaging of underwater environments
29 September 2022 3:22pm
Battery-free wireless imaging of underwater environments | Nature Communications
Imaging underwater environments is of great importance to marine sciences, sustainability, climatology, defense, robotics, geology, space exploration, and food security. Despite advances in underwater imaging, most of the ocean and marine organisms remain unobserved and undiscovered. Existing methods for underwater imaging are unsuitable for scalable, long-term, in situ observations because they require tethering for power and communication. Here we describe underwater backscatter imaging, a method for scalable, real-time wireless imaging of underwater environments using fully-submerged battery-free cameras. The cameras power up from harvested acoustic energy, capture color images using ultra-low-power active illumination and a monochrome image sensor, and communicate wirelessly at net-zero-power via acoustic backscatter. We demonstrate wireless battery-free imaging of animals, plants, pollutants, and localization tags in enclosed and open-water environments. The method’s self-sustaining nature makes it desirable for massive, continuous, and long-term ocean deployments with many applications including marine life discovery, submarine surveillance, and underwater climate change monitoring. The authors present an approach to underwater imaging, which does not require tethering or batteries. The low-power camera uses power from harvested acoustic energy and communicates colour images wirelessly via acoustic backscatter.
Conservation Tech Directory - new update!
29 August 2022 2:38pm
26 September 2022 10:07pm
Thanks so much!!
The planet matters. People matter. Location matters.
23 September 2022 12:16pm
Movement Ecology Field Team and Data Coordinator: Osa Conservation [Open until filled)
22 September 2022 11:55pm
Workshop: Building UK Partnerships for Conservation Technology
22 September 2022 3:02pm
WIA After Hours: Episode #5 - AI for Wildlife Conservation and Imageomics with Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf
21 September 2022 6:53pm
WIA After Hours: Season : Episode #5 - AI for Wildlife Conservation and Imageomics with Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf
WIA After Hours: Season : Episode #5 - AI for Wildlife Conservation and Imageomics with Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf
HeroX Challenge: Better Call Trawl
21 September 2022 6:50pm
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Announces Theodore Roosevelt Genius Prize Winners
21 September 2022 6:30pm
Amazon Sustainability call for proposals — Fall 2022
20 September 2022 11:37am
Collecting Critically Endangered Plants on Cliffs using a Drone
16 September 2022 7:49pm
Data Beyond Borders Symposium
15 September 2022 12:35pm
Senior Innovation Officer, EPA
14 September 2022 1:23pm
Crypto funding for ecosystem and conservation science
8 September 2022 1:48pm
Virtual fencing / Kinetic energy harvesting / Holistic grazing
16 June 2022 7:12am
26 July 2022 11:13am
Hi,
One daily fix is planned for now. This will be challenging enough for KEH :)
Kr, D-
31 July 2022 5:15pm
I see, thanks!
One daily fix is quite limiting.
Do you have an idea how KEH might affect accelerometry?
Cheers,
2 September 2022 11:05am
I don't think KEH would influence accelerometry at all.
One other way to think about it is - the KEH is a movement sensor itself.
The GPS is quite a severe factor in the energy balance of the system, so if the data is perhaps not transmitted constantly, more frequent locks could be achieved. I believe GPS transceivers are becoming more and more efficient and the KEH enabled GPS should become an option soon.
Kr,
D-
Mara Predators Hackathon
30 August 2022 1:28pm
Conservation Technology Research Internship
26 August 2022 4:58pm
Online Hackathon: Predators conservation in the Maasai Mara
22 August 2022 10:32am
Ceres Wild Rhino application
22 August 2022 1:29am
29 September 2022 4:05am
Lead Software Engineer for ARISE
19 August 2022 8:22am
Post Doctoral researcher - DNA species detection technology
15 August 2022 4:50pm
Lead Software Engineer, Wildlife Insights
10 August 2022 11:06pm
Technology may solve climate change problems, but it’s also causing them | VentureBeat
8 August 2022 11:26am
Technology may solve climate change problems, but it’s also causing them | VentureBeat
It’s time for tech leaders to address the sector’s sustainability challenges by questioning supply and demand before it's too late.
Survey: The role and applicability of block-chain technology in conservation survey
3 August 2022 3:28pm
Any results coming out of this survey that you would like to share?
Research Associate
29 July 2022 9:34pm
CERES TAG
22 July 2022 3:36am
2022 EarthRanger User Conference
20 July 2022 9:08pm
Earth Species Project - Senior AI Research Scientist
15 July 2022 6:40pm
Fast Company Feature: Smart Parks
14 July 2022 4:19pm
23 September 2022 5:26pm
Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!