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Protected Area Management Tools / Feed

Protected area management systems empower essential frontline conservationists to monitor wildlife and ecosystems in real-time. With tools like SMART, EarthRanger, and Esri's Conservation Land Management toolkit, users can collect, integrate, and display data from across landscapes to ensure that key information from the field gets to decision-makers in time to make a difference. This group is the place for new and experienced users of these tools alike to ask questions, share experiences, and work together to improve their effectiveness in critical conservation landscapes around the world. 

discussion

Wishlist for kit in a field-based Research Station or tech testing space?

Stephanie O'Donnell

27 November 2023 10:41am

Hi wildlabbers!A colleague is looking to crowdsource some advice: what would be on your wishlist for kitting out a field based space for research and tech development?...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

28 November 2023 3:25am

Regine Weckauf over on linkedin: 

'Little to do with research and tech development, but given how hard it is to attract and retain experienced staff to field based positions, I know it makes a difference how nice the space is. Just because it's the "field", shouldn't mean staff living in basic conditions, regardless of how many times we've been told to see it as a badge of honor. If you have the money, put in nice bathrooms, kitchen, living spaces, and private accommodation. Maybe even a nursery? It creates more local employment opportunities and people genuinely want to visit.'

 

Carly Batist

28 November 2023 2:25pm

Love the idea for in-house gear/supplies! It can be SOO difficult to travel with batteries, electronics parts with airline regs, country policies, etc. and shipping recorders/trail cams/etc. gets VERY (prohibitively) pricey in some countries with customs and taxes. Would be great to have an in-country place to source that kind of equipment. 

Housing educational resources related to that tech (in the form of people, print materials, computer tutorials) in-house would be similarly awesome. Particularly/especially in local languages.   

Having in-country wet labs as well helps the eDNA/genetics folks, since sample import/export permitting can be (always seems to be?!) a nightmare, so if you can even just do PCR and/or extractions in-country that helps a ton. 

In terms of overall field-station-wishlist - honestly, just the promise of continued funding and staff. Every field station I've been to or worked at is in a constant search for enough money to get through the next month/year, because the funding comes in the establish a station but then not to maintain it long-term. It's not sexy for a wishlist per se, but boy is it over-looked and much-needed. 

@hikinghack from Dinalab would probably have lots of good insights on this! 

Brett Muir

29 November 2023 7:59pm

My suggestion would probably be a 3D printer and Solder Station with a stock of common components. With those two things you can solve most problems.

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New Tool from Defenders Connects Land Trusts with Management Tools and More | Defenders of Wildlife

Esther Githinji

20 November 2023 10:55am

Defenders unveiled WALT: Wildlife & Land Trusts, an interactive tool empowering land trusts to conserve more land by making accessible the necessary information for funding & technical assistance.

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discussion

What Biologgers are you using?

Holly Cormack

30 August 2023 10:44am

Hello biologging community!My name is Holly Cormack and I’m the new Conservation Technology Intern in the WILDLABS team. We are researching what different...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

7 September 2023 10:57am

Interesting. interesting. I'm probably jumping the gun here but I'm curious - are you getting any trends on types of biologgers or specific manufacturers people are talking about? Or is everyone using different tags/manufacturers? 

Stephanie O'Donnell

7 September 2023 11:00am

Ah! It's great to find out about your tags - great video, thanks for sharing. We'd love to hear from some of your users about their experiences with your tags! Would you be able to share the poll with your user community? 

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discussion

Recommendations for Personnel Trackers in challenging terrain

Lisa Mayinje

18 August 2023 2:22pm

Hi WildLabs community, I support a few wildlife areas in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The terrain can be very challenging here with deep narrow valleys and thick...

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Emma Richards

22 August 2023 1:31pm

Hi Lisa,

Not my area of expertise either and hopefully I'm not way off base here as it's not a cheap tracker but...have you looked at near vertical incident skywave (NVIS) radio systems?  I was trialling them in Nouabalé-Ndoki - we didn't have the terrain issues but we did have vegetation issues - and they worked really well over long distances.  Also possible to integrate with Earthranger if I recall correctly.  

Hope this is of at least a little help.

 

Best,

 

Emma

Akiba

17 September 2023 1:33pm

Hi Lisa. 

Did you ever find a solution for this? Would love to chat more about the use case and requirements.

Akiba

Lars Holst Hansen

18 September 2023 8:10am

Have you tried or considered Garmin Inreach or Zoleo trackers?

I have experience with Garmin Inreach in relatively rugged terrain in Greenland (probably not as steep as what you have).

They work relatively well. One disadvantage with the early models is that the tracking data can not be downloaded directly from the devices as .gpx but needs to take the detour over the Garmin cloud. The newer models have direct download of tracks available.

I like the fact that the Garmin units are proper standalone handheld GPS units to be used for navigation and waypoint marking and you can also relatively easily share your own location and even points of interest with team members in the field (by sending geotagged messages - not actual waypoints, unfortunately). 

Garmin Inreach is listed as an EarthRanger partner at https://www.earthranger.com/partner but I have no idea if there is any possibility of real integration.

Cheers,

Lars

 

 

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Artificial Intelligence in African Anti-Poaching Strategy | by Tusk | Jul, 2023 | Medium

Stephanie O'Donnell

12 July 2023 4:59pm

"Artificial Intelligence could be the solution needed to effectively monitor and safeguard vast landscapes across Africa that, up until now, have been protected solely by patrolling." Read Tusk's latest Medium blog on the emergence of AI in conservation

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discussion

Need for statisticians in conservation?

Lev Birman

6 July 2023 8:23pm

Hello, WildLabs community!I'm currently a Ph.D. student in statistical physics at Virginia Tech, but I am contemplating a shift to a pure and applied statistics Master's program...

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Carly Batist

12 July 2023 2:59pm

Hi Lev,

We always need more hands in conservation, from whichever field! Engineering, computer science, AI/ML, ecology, environmental science, communications, statisticians, etc. 

I would say that conservation tech is moving heavily towards deep learning for data processing/analysis just because of the sheer amount of data being generated now, so it's always helpful if you have experience in that. But we still need ecological modeling (species distribution models, occupancy models, accumulation curves, etc.) to translate processed data into actionable conservation insights! So experience here too is a plus. 

If you'd like to get a better idea of the diversity of programs, people, and orgs in conservation tech as you navigate your journey, the Conservation Tech Directory may also be a helpful resource for you.

All the best,

Carly   

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