Group

Latin America Community / Feed

This group aims to establish a regional hub in Latin America that provides a space for knowledge sharing and network-building among the growing number of people working in conservation technology in the region.  Este grupo tiene como objetivo establecer un centro regional en América Latina que proporcione un espacio para el intercambio de conocimientos y la creación de redes entre el creciente número de personas que trabajan en tecnología para la conservación en la región.

discussion

¡Bienvenidos a la comunidad Latinoamericana! // Welcome to the Latin American community!

¡Hola a todos y todas!Estamos super contentos de comenzar este espacio donde podamos conectar, compartir ideas y conocimientos, y colaborar en proyectos que ayuden a proteger...

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Hola. Me gusto la idea! prefiero en español, mas que nada en todo este tema de informatica, etc, que ya posee un alto grado de dificultad. Aca en Argentina estoy trabajando con anfibios y grabadoras digitales automaticas, ahora comenzando a explorar sobre detección automatica o semiautomatica. 

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discussion

Comunidades de práctica en Latinoamérica

Hola!Me gustaría armar una lista de comunidades de práctica relacionadas con tecnología para la conservación en América Latina y explorar cómo podemos conectar nuestra comunidad...

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Hola Vane,

Te nombro al menos dos comunidades acá en Colombia que están involucradas en estos temas:

  • Red Ecoacústica Colombiana: Una red interdisciplinaria de investigadores y colaboradores comprometidos en explorar la intersección entre la acústica y la ecología. Uno de sus objetivos estratégicos es desarrollar tanto sensores como algoritmos y flujos de análisis para procesar los datos bioacústicos.
  • Red OTUS: Red nacional de cámaras trampa 
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funding

Multiple grants

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...

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funding

BirdCLEF+ 2025

Species identification from audio, focused on birds, amphibians, mammals and insects from the Middle Magdalena Valley of Colombia.

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Link

Gato andino y su cachorro grabados por primera vez en Mendoza: imágenes clave del felino más amenazado de América

Un equipo de investigadores de WCS logró registrar imágenes de un cachorro de gato andino (Leopardus jacobita), el felino más amenazado de América, en la provincia de Mendoza, Argentina. Este importante hallazgo fue posible gracias al uso de cámaras trampa, destacando la...

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discussion

A call for support

I have been accepted into the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program, a prestigious summer course on Sustainable Environmental Management at...

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Hi, Leticia - Have a look on Planet Women and Awesome Foundation, they might offer something. I'd also try to contact the folks from Onçafari and Pousada Caiman and ask for their sponsorship. Good luck! 

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discussion

Tracking tapir and giant armadillos

Hi everyone, I lead an organization called Amazon Research Int in Peru and we have a fairly new project in the Amazon-Andes basin focused on reforestation of a 6-hr area impacted...

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We aim to monitor beyond the 6-hectare site, especifically right now we are assessing where salt licks and natural water sources are nearby so we can understand what's the full area we should be surveying to have a better understand of animal movement!

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discussion

Use of acoustics to combat wildlife crime // Uso de acústica para combatir delitos contra la vida silvestre

Hi everyone,I’m looking for information on projects or research papers that use acoustic technology to combat wildlife crime, such as anti-poaching efforts, illegal logging, or...

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Hola Vanessa,

Aside from whats already commented, did you find any interesting new leads on this? I'm also interested in ways ecoacoustic tech can be used against wildlife crime, both as in research development, but even more so in its short or long-term applications and how it can be truly adopted in source countries.
It seems to me research or work in this is still limited but there's potential! I'd love to stay in touch about it :)

Hey Xiona,


I see that you are from a university that is very close to where I live. I have a platform that is well suited for combating wildlife crime and I perceive that it’s rather a small step to go from where I am to where you guys are all asking for. I suspect the piece I’m missing could be generated pretty easily with AI.


Would you be interested in having a chat about this ? Perhaps we can embark on a project ?


Kim from near Sittard,

The Netherlands

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discussion

¿Conoces colecciones de sonidos de la biodiversidad en América Latina? / Você conhece coleções de sons da biodiversidade na América Latina?

Las colecciones digitales de sonidos de la biodiversidad son recursos fundamentales que muchas veces pasan desapercibidos, y es crucial visibilizarlas. Por eso, me gustaría que...

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He compilado esta lista de bibliotecas de referencia acústica!

I've compiled this list of acoustic reference libraries! 

Carly!

Está fantástica la lista. Me gusta la idea de diferenciar las colecciones de sonido y los conjuntos de dato para machine learning

Acá comparto información sobre nuestra colección de sonidos ambientales:

Este recurso de BioacousticsIA me pareció particularmente interesante ya que está público, tiene una clara estrategia para mantenerlo al día y está diseñado para incluir muchos detalles sobre los conjuntos de grabaciones.

Muchas gracias! :D

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discussion

Detecting Thrips and Larger Insects Together

Hello everyone,I’m reaching out to discuss a challenge we’re tackling here in Brazil related to pest monitoring in agriculture. Thrips (Frankliniella spp., Thrips spp...

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Hi Kim, the yellow sticky paper I have today is around 10cm by 30cm. I took a picture with a really good cellphone of the whole paper and the resolution was not good enough (3072 × 4080 in Ultra HDR). This gave me 10pixels / mm, but I could not get a precise enough model with yolo at this resolution for the Thrips... I will play around with the cellphone for a bit more and see if 2 or 4 pictures are enough. We even made a support for the cellphone to have always the same distance (but if I could avoid this for practical reasons in the future would be fine too). With the digital microscope we used we got over 50 pixels per mm and so got a quiet good model in identifying them (but time consuming), sometime dust also shows up and with the phone camera you can't differentiate Thrips and dust ;)))) Lets see if I can edit my post to include some cellphone images into it.

Yeah, I would expect that you might need to have higher resolution if the critters are very small. Still might be just a lens choice. But not up on this amount of lens difference, so don't know how hard it would be.

So, updated the text a bit with images cropped at 100% zoom :) we are already happy with the time reductions we got, but... would like to get at least 90% time reduction instead of 70% :))) we know that with a very expensive and high power camera we could probably do it, so one approach we are thinking of is just taking a closer macro picture with a cellphone of let's say 1/3 or 1/4 of the sticky paper and use this data instead of everything...  or take 2-3 pictures (but we don't want to waste time in sticking the images together).

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event

Derechos Humanos y Conservación

Desde el equipo Latinoamericano de Derechos y Comunidades de Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) estaremos compartiendo el webinar “Derechos Humanos y Conservación: Ejemplos para un futuro sostenible en Latinoamérica...

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discussion

Who gave you your last research travel grant? | ¿Quién le concedió su última beca de viaje de investigación? | Quem lhe concedeu sua última bolsa de viagem de pesquisa?

Someone asked me how their NGO based in Africa could fund visiting scholars who come to their NGO. The NGO runs a biological station for research, wildlife conservation, local...

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That is challenging and I'd be keen to hear other people's suggestions! 

From the academic realm, I'll say that many graduate students get travel funding through scientific societies. E.g. the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation has seed grants:

https://tropicalbiology.org/grants-awards/atbc-seed-research-grant/

And Society for Conservation Biology has grad student awards:
https://conbio.org/mini-sites/scb-awards/student-awards

These are often restricted to members unfortunately. National/regional societies might be good resources for people to look into. 

Oops, sorry about that. I wrote a reply a few weeks ago, and I am pretty sure I clicked the button, but apparently something went wrong. So, another attempt

Thank you for your answer, @brandon. I had overlooked  the scientific societies. 

Membership may be an issue, but I noticed that the ATBC has diversified fees depending on career stage and the member country's economic development, and the SCB membership fee depends on income.

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discussion

Traducción de idiomas / Language translation

Durante la Hora de la Variedad de esta mañana, el tema de la traducción entre idiomas se discutió con cierta extensión.  Específicamente en el contexto de estos foros y...

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Me encanta esta grupa. Tengo cinco anos Duolingo 😀

Thanks for writing this all down, @Wade !

During the discussion, I claimed that searching WILDLABS content in a different language is not possible in spite of the translation tools in browsers. Someone ( was it @carlybatist ?) then pointed out that this might work with ChatGPT. I haven't had the chance to test that yet. If it works, then that would be awesome.

----------------------------------- Google translate debajo ----------

¡Gracias por escribir todo esto, @Wade! Durante la discusión, afirmé que no es posible buscar contenido de WILDLABS en un idioma diferente a pesar de las herramientas de traducción de los navegadores. Alguien (¿fue @carlybatist?) señaló que esto podría funcionar con ChatGPT. Todavía no he tenido la oportunidad de probarlo. Si funciona, sería fantástico.

Gracias @Wade, por iniciar esta conversación. La traducción en Mac quedó impecable! Nos encantaría seguir escuchando sus experiencias y sugerencias sobre cómo hacer que nuestros foros y eventos sean más accesibles e inclusivos en diferentes idiomas. En cuanto a Chrome, existe una opción similar con la extensión de Google Translate (y también hay una opción parecida en Edge). Si escribo un mensaje, puedo seleccionarlo, hacer clic derecho y elegir "Traducir". Esto abre un pop-up de Google Translate y me permite seleccionar el idioma de destino (aunque está limitado a un número específico de caracteres 😕). Sin embargo, como menciona Frank, el problema con estas soluciones es la limitación para buscar contenido en otros idiomas dentro de la plataforma, ya que la traducción es solo superficial y no afecta la búsqueda de palabras clave en el contenido original. Sería interesante explorar opciones de integración más profundas, como el uso de herramientas de inteligencia artificial que faciliten tanto la traducción como la búsqueda y navegación en varios idiomas.

 --------------------Chat GPT translation below ---------------------------------------- 

Thank you, @Wade, for starting this conversation. The Mac translation worked flawlessly! We would love to continue hearing your experiences and suggestions on how to make our forums and events more accessible and inclusive in different languages. As for Chrome, there’s a similar option using the Google Translate extension (and a comparable option in Edge). If I write a message, I can select it, right-click, and choose "Translate". This opens a Google Translate pop-up and allows me to select the target language (although it is limited to a certain number of characters 😕). However, as Frank mentioned, the issue with these solutions is that they don’t support searching content in other languages within the platform, as the translation is only superficial and doesn’t affect keyword searches in the original content. It would be interesting to explore deeper integration options, such as using AI tools that can facilitate both translation and searching/navigating across multiple languages.

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discussion

Anyone else going to COP16?

I'll be at COP16 in Calí next month and am wondering what other conservation technology folks will be there as well! I know @StephODonnell and @TaliaSpeaker will be there as well.

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event

Seminar Series About Underwater Sounds!

FishSounds Educate is excited to present an 8-part online seminar series all about underwater sounds and their study, targeted at a broad audience of bioacousticians and acoustics-curious folks alike! See the event...

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We will have our next seminar on Friday Dec. 6 at 9 am Pacific—all about freshwater soundscapes with Dr. Jack Greenhalgh!...
The FishSounds Educate seminar series resumes Jan 10 at 9 am Pacific—this time with a break in format! We'll be hosting a discussion about a community-led special issue on...
We will have our next FishSounds Educate seminar on Friday Jan 24 at 9 am Pacific—all about underwater invertebrate sounds with Dr. Ashlee Lillis!...
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