Wildlife crime is one of the greatest challenges facing conservation, and one of the conservation tech world's biggest areas of innovation. With new ideas and solutions constantly being put forth to track and protect species targeted by poachers, manage protected areas and support rangers, and combat the growing online market for illegal wildlife products, the engineers and conservationists working to solve wildlife crime's many challenges rely on tools like machine learning, biologging, camera traps, acoustic monitoring, drones, mobile apps, and more.
This wide variety of overlapping technology makes our Wildlife Crime group a potential melting pot for many of our other communities, and makes it an especially exciting place to find collaborators working in different tech spheres to meet a common goal. Whether you're a camera trap expert looking for information on thermal vision to spot potential poachers, a machine learning expert with the skills to analyze acoustic data for gunshots, or a protected area manager seeking the latest integrated mobile tools, this group can connect you with the right members of our community!
Below, you'll find WILDLABS resources and conversations to help you understand how different technologies are being put to work in the fight against wildlife crime, and what conservation tech practitioners need for these tools to be effective.
Three Tutorials and Videos for Beginners:
- How do I use AI to fight wildlife crime? | Lily Xu, Tech Tutors
- WWF Wildlife Crime Technology Project | Eric Becker, Virtual Meetups
- SmartParks | Laurens de Groot, Virtual Meetups
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- Snare detection technologies | Rachel Kramer
- Tools for conservation management | Chris Muashekele
- Looking for Intelligence Database Software | Dexter Oelrichs
Three Articles for Beginners:
- Using AIS data to investigate the world's fishing ports, Max Schofield
- How do Wildlife Crime Experts view Remote Sensing Technologies used to Combat Illegal Wildlife Crime?, Isla Duporge
- Metal Detecting Sensors for Anti-Poaching, Sam Seccombe
Join this group now to get to know our community and start discussing solutions and ideas together!
Header photo: © Frank af Petersens/Save the Elephants
World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
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Smart Parks
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Article
NParks opens Singapore’s first Centre for Wildlife Forensics
Singapore National Parks Board (NParks)
Singapore's National Parks Board (NParks) has now opened the country's first Centre for Wildlife Forensics (CWF), and launched a new K9 unit to help uncover illegal wildlife and wildlife products at Singapore’s borders...
20 September 2021
Article
Announcing the 2021 CLP Team Award Winners
Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP)
Our friends at the Conservation Leadership Programme are proud to announce their 2021 CLP Team Award recipients! We'll be featuring interviews with some CLP winners about their projects, the technology they're using,...
17 May 2021
Article
It Takes a #Tech4Wildlife Community
Ellie Warren
Check out WILDLABS' feature about the importance of building a community in the conservation technology world, shared on the IUCN World Conservation Congress blog to celebrate their upcoming event. Read an excerpt by...
17 May 2021
Article
Getting Started with Conservation Dogs: An Interview with Paul Bunker
Ellie Warren and 1 more
Today we're talking to Paul Bunker, owner of Chiron K9, a canine consultancy company specializing in detection, author of the workbook Imprint Your Detection Dog in 15 Days, a resource aimed at providing tools to get...
7 May 2021
Article
Protecting Wildlife with Machine Learning
Ellie Warren
Last year, Tim van Deursen and Thijs Suijten shared their new "Hack the Poacher" system with us, presenting a unique way to detect poachers in real-time within protected national parks. Read on to learn about their...
29 January 2021
Article
This month, WILDLABS member Drew Cronin shared the new paper "Empowering rangers through technology and innovation." This collaborative effort included several members of the WILDLABS community and leadership, and...
27 January 2021
Article
Hackathon Opportunity: Vaquita Hacks
WILDLABS Team
Do you have innovative #tech4wildlife ideas that could save one of the most endangered species on earth from extinction? Apply now to join Vaquita Hack, a hackathon for students and early career conservationists! This...
10 November 2020
Article
Today, WWF conservation engineering intern Ashley Rosen shares insight into the process of redesigning a camera mount for FLIR thermal cameras used by rangers in the fight against poaching. Ashley's design will become a...
24 August 2020
Funding
WWF US Conservation Leadership Award
World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
Applications are now open for the the WWF-US Conservation Leadership Award, a prize honoring exceptional young people working toward conservation solutions in the United States. If you are an early career...
13 August 2020
Funding
Challenge: ElephantEdge
Smart Parks
Protecting elephants from conservation's most pressing issues like poaching and human-wildlife conflict requires big, bold, and innovative solutions. Hackster.io, Smart Parks, Edge Impulse, Microsoft, and several other...
11 August 2020
Article
Metal Detecting Sensors for Anti-Poaching
Sam Seccombe
Since 2016, ZSL’s Instant Detect team have been working on improving metal detecting sensors for anti-poaching. The team believe that using metal detecting sensors will provide a highly targeted detection of potential...
10 August 2020
Article
SMART is excited to showcase the features of their new data collection solution, SMART Mobile! Built around the specific needs of the SMART user community, this streamlined mobile tool allows staff in protected areas to...
23 June 2020
June 2025
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Nalini
July 2025
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Recently updated organisations
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The European project Nature FIRST is hosting its final conference at Ouwehands Dierenpark in the Netherlands on 25–26 June 2025,... |
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Community Base, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Earth Observation 101 Community, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Protected Area Management Tools, Wildlife Crime | 7 hours 47 minutes ago | |
| Hi Georg,Oh, that's a pity. But thanks anyway for checking!Really appreciate it!CheersMartina |
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Wildlife Crime | 1 week 2 days ago | |
| Hi Adam! Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. I have not used radar systems or AI systems for this sort of detection, but there are methods using change detection... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Wildlife Crime | 1 month ago | |
| Hi @iainmcnicol , welcome to WILDLABS! Thanks for posting this on here. I have shared with my colleagues at Fauna & Flora who have some experience (especially with the... |
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Community Base, Geospatial, Protected Area Management Tools, Wildlife Crime | 1 month 1 week ago | |
| Great dear Travis,This is a great news and an opportunity to me and my local bee keepers. It really sounds very helpful.Here is my contacts:Email: muganyizi@pales.or.tz ... |
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Climate Change, Conservation Tech Training and Education, East Africa Community, Funding and Finance, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
| You can also check out WWF's newly launched C2C: Conflict to Coexistence approach. It provides a framework and methodology for developing tailor-made human-wildlife conflict (HWC... |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 months 1 week ago | |
| Not a book, but a very real documentary:Stroop - Journey into the Rhino Horn War |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 months 2 weeks ago | |
| Thank you so much for sharing! They seem to only state the official DFFE statistics nowadays. From my connections in SouthAfrica these numbers don't always seem to reflect... |
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Wildlife Crime | 3 months 2 weeks ago | |
| 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... |
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Wildlife Crime, Acoustics, Latin America Community | 4 months 3 weeks ago | |
| Hats off to your team for this absolute game-changing technology! We rescue stray and wild animals in Taiwan, and the bulk of our work is saving animals maimed by wire snares... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 6 months ago | |
| Because spotting the trucks on the roads is trivial. You could do it from 150m or further away in complete darkness. If this interests someone then I have a solution to do that. |
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Wildlife Crime | 7 months 1 week ago | |
| Thanks, we know they are breeding these animals here, I asked, since it's seems to be an expensive hobby, we need to allocate more funding for rural women in entrepreneurship and... |
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Acoustics, Animal Movement, Citizen Science, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Protected Area Management Tools, Wildlife Crime | 7 months 1 week ago |
