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The WILDLABS Community Base is the ideal place to get oriented with the all that our community platform offers, hear about news and opportunitys, and to meet new friends and collaborators. 

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discussion

Welcome to WILDLABS!

Stephanie O'Donnell

29 October 2015 5:16pm

Hello and welcome to the WILDLABS community! With 6,000 members and counting, we want to get to know you a little better. In a couple of...

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Akiba

25 May 2024 4:26am

Hi. We're FreakLabs, a conservation technology company based in Japan and Australia. For Japan, we have our manufacturing facilities in Chiba prefecture on the Boso Peninsula. We've been hearing a lot about the biodiversity work coming out of Okinawa and OIST. Would love to have a meeting with someone from Think Nature. 

Akiba

Aurélie Jambon

30 May 2024 1:26pm

Hello everyone!

I have been following the Wildlabs more or less actively for 5 years now, but never introduced myself! 

I am an agronomy engineer specialised in conservation technologies. I have worked in private companies and NGOs, managing the development of conservation technologies’ projects on the development side as well as on the conservation expert side. I have recently joined an NGO called Noé, working on broader conservation projects around land stewardship, agroecology, restauration, connectivity and coexistence, but, of course, conservation tech are never far! 

I look forward to learning and sharing with all of you!

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discussion

Research in community-based conservation programs: best practices & challenges

Yanna Vogiazou

24 May 2024 9:57am

A practice-based research project: I am carrying out a qualitative research project to better understand the challenges and best practices when designing and...

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Alex Rood

28 May 2024 8:04pm

Hey there! Here are some people you may way to reach out to:

  • @EstherGithinji 
  • Kate Tointon from Fauna and Flora International's Conservation Leadership Programme
  • @Abigail 

I'll keep thinking about other possible contacts!

Frank van der Most

29 May 2024 12:25am

Hi Yanna,

Your project seems not particularly technology oriented, which is okay, of course. However, if you're not already calling or searching there, I would suggest checking out 

cheers

Frank

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discussion

Meta: Does anyone know how to Stay logged in to Wildlabs.net?

Andrew Quitmeyer

24 May 2024 8:59pm

One challenge I have on wildlabs is that I get logged out after maybe half a day or so. It makes it a bit tricky for me to use the forums because I'll go to a thing, but then have...

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Kim Hendrikse

30 May 2024 7:12am

Oh and I think it is likely that it would be hard to change the system to allow just you to stay logged in forever. If the cookie policy is changed to “forever” it will be a decision that affects everyone.

I hope these comments are helpful.

Kim Hendrikse

30 May 2024 7:24am

Oh. It also makes a difference if you close all browser windows or if you leave some open. Generally if you close all browser windows then the whole browser application is closed and you will be asked to login again. If you leave at least one browser window open you avoid this behavior.

But as this is not a banking website, and a few people find it annoying, maybe the easiest thing is to remove the time-to-live/expiry cookie policy like LinkedIn and medium.com do and then it’s solved.

Kim Hendrikse

30 May 2024 8:11am

If you open the developer tools, (Ctrl-shift C) on firefox, and look under the storage section), you can see the cookies in use by the site. For wildlabs.net, you can see that there is an expiry date. When I logged in today, I can see that the expiry date is 22 June 2024. So several weeks. That there is an expiry date means that it's a persistent cookie, i.e. it's written to disk and stays when the browser is closed.

The particular cookie concerned has a name that starts with SSESS, that will be the sites convention for it's login cookies. This suggests that wildlabs is setup in principle to stay logged in, in my case till 22 June 2024.

Again, so any difference in behavior is likely client side differences. Try logging in with different environments and seeing if the behavior is different for you? If it's purely client side behavior that causes this, then there is nothing that wildlabs.net can do to change this.

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discussion

Thoughts on new MSc in Conservation Technology

Emma Higgins

24 May 2024 3:54pm

Hello everyone, We are in the process of developing a new MSc in Conservation Technology at my university and would welcome your feedback. If you would be willing to give...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

28 May 2024 5:42pm

Hi Emma, 

Have you spoken to Kate Jones? She would be happy to speak with you about her team's work developing the MSc Ecology and Data Science at UCL, which sounds incredible and comprehensive. This MSc is the best conservation tech programme I've heard about so far, so it would be worth chatting to her team!

Steph

https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/35481-kate-jones
Frank van der Most

29 May 2024 12:14am

Hi Emma,

Thank you for your outline. Feel free to send me an outline ( I sent you my email in a private WildLabs message ), but from your description I would like to give two comments already,

1) Besides learning about these technologies, the course should in my view also include learning the skills of finding out about new technologies and assessing them. The list of technologies that you are giving seems state of the art, but in the course of the students career it is likely to change completely a couple of times over. Much of what is on the list would not be there ten years ago. Even only three years ago AI (as we now think of it ) would probably not be on the list, but ML would.

2) Perhaps you were planning this already, but when it comes to 'correct use and validation', in my mind, that should definitely include the social/societal aspects of these technologies, no matter if it is about use in the global North or global South. What I am after is Technology Assessment.

Hopefully, this is of use to you

cheers

Frank

Stephanie O'Donnell

29 May 2024 12:44pm

Building on Frank's comments, I'd also think about including some conversation about the ethical use of technology - Trishant's talk at Tech Tutors a little while ago sparked a really important conversation here in our community, one that would be valueable to have with your students. 

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event

WILDLABS Conservation Tech Meetup, Cambridge

Henry Rees

24 May 2024 10:58am

We are excited to invite you to a special happy hour meetup hosted by the WILDLABS team at our home in Cambridge in the UK! This is a fantastic opportunity to connect with fellow conservation tech enthusiasts, share...

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event

ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMES WORKSHOP 2024

Alex Rood

23 May 2024 9:01pm

This workshop is intended for researchers, governmental and non-governmental organizations, investigative teams, legal bodies, and international agencies that develop or use Earth Observation for environmental...

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discussion

Who's attending the World Biodiversity Forum in Davos?

Talia Speaker

20 May 2024 9:50pm

Hi all, @StephODonnell and I are making plans for our trip to Davos in June for the World Biodiversity Forum. Is anyone else planning to be there? We'll be presenting the findings...

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Robin Sandfort

22 May 2024 8:29am

Sounds great.
At what day will you present your talk?

Greetings from Austria,
Robin

Talia Speaker

22 May 2024 5:39pm

We'll be presenting Wednesday morning as part of session 10.1b on "Integrating earth observations and biological tools in ecology and evolution to cogenerate knowledge towards meeting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets." For the side events, we're planning tentatively for a social Monday evening (following the welcome Apéro) and a meeting Wednesday during or after lunch on leveraging animal movement to meet conservation/policy goals. 

We'd love to see you!

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discussion

WILDLABS downtime and performance issues due to AI bot attack

Filip Hnízdo

29 April 2024 3:35pm

Hi everyone,Some of you will have noticed that WILDLABS was inaccessible or frustratingly slow on Friday (April 26th, 2024). Aside from explaining this downtime, what happened is...

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Frank van der Most

1 May 2024 6:05pm

I noticed the site being annoyingly slow some time last week. Thank you for clearing that up, for finding the cause and solving the issue.

I'm not claiming deep knowledge on AI, but as a member this community, I'd be happy to give you my insights.

For starters: I am not categorically against bots scraping 'my' content, whether for AI training purposes, search engines, or other purposes. In principle, I find it a good thing that this forum is open to non-member users, and to me that extends to non-member use. Obviously, there are some exceptions here. For example when locations of individuals of endangered species are discussed, that should be behind closed doors.

Continuing down this line of reasoning, apparently it matters to me how 'my' content is being used. So, if someone wants to make an AI to aid nature conservation, I say, let them have it. There is the practical side of scraping activities that may be blocking or hindering the site, but there may be practical solutions for this. I don't know, say, have special opening hours for such things, or have the site engine prepare the data and make it available as a data dump somewhere.

Since purpose matters, organizations or individuals wanting to scrape the site should be vetted and given access or not. This is far more easily said than done. However, every step in the direction would be worth the while, because most technology publicly discussed here has good use for nature conservation, but equally bad use for nature destruction. For example, it's good to acoustically monitor bird sounds to monitor species, but also comes in handy when you are in the exotic bird trafficking business.

One could argue that since we allow public access, we should not care either about why bots are scraping the site. I would not go that far. After all, individual people browsing the site with nefarious purposes in mind is something else than a bot systematically scraping the entire site (or sections thereof) for bad purposes. It's a matter of scale.

 

 

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article

Introducing The Inventory!

Jake Burton

1 May 2024 12:46pm

The Inventory is your one-stop shop for conservation technology tools, organisations, and R&D projects. Start contributing to it now!

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Brad Nahill

3 May 2024 5:33pm

This is fantastic, congrats to the WildLabs team! Look forward to diving in.
Robin Sandfort

17 May 2024 7:29am

Hi @JakeBurton,thanks for your great work on the Inventory!Would it be possible to see or filter new entries or reviews?Greetings from Austrian forest,Robin 
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article

A Year of Supporting East African Conservation Technology: Lessons on How You Can Amplify #Tech4Wildlife

Esther Githinji

29 April 2024 10:52am

It has been an extraordinary year supporting and growing the regional East African Conservation Technology Community at WILDLABS. We've made great strides and unlocked exciting opportunities for our community as we...

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Alex Rood

3 May 2024 4:14pm

Congrats Esther! Can't wait to continue working together.
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careers

Monitoring Team Lead, Ponterra

Ana De Lucia

23 April 2024 3:19pm

Great opportunity to join our team! We are #hiring. We’re excited to announce that we’re looking for a talented individual to perform the role of Monitoring Team Lead. If you’re a great team player, we’d love to...

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discussion

Introduction and Networking

Loveness Mutungi

22 April 2024 9:37am

Hello Wildlabbers,I'm Loveness Lamuel Mutungi, a female Tanzanian and a 2023 graduate from Sokoine University of Agriculture with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences...

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Esther Githinji

22 April 2024 10:46am

Hello and welcome to WILDLABS @loveness :) 

What a great intro to what you are doing and interested in pursuing! I'd like to help direct you to our resources page, where you can check out multiple open career and academic opportunities from across your region that are posted regularly by the community. Find our Resources page linked here. 

Which specific areas within conservation/conservation technology are you most interested in at the moment? We have over 32 specialised groups in our community you could explore here to help guide you as you go along your career journey :) 

Best wishes! 

Loveness Mutungi

23 April 2024 12:41pm

Hello Ms Esther👋

Thank you for taking your time to reply to me with such helpful response.

I'm interested in conservation technology such as camera traps, GIS and Remote sensing, tools like EarthRanger, wildlife tracking collars, Data collection apps. I've already joined the groups just after reading your response and I'll keep visit the Resources Page to find more opportunities.

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discussion

Conservation Tech Career Pathways - what do you want to know? 

Stephanie O'Donnell

17 June 2022 1:30pm

Hi wildlabbers, I made a casual comment in my post in the friday check in thread: This week I'm seeing a lot of questions coming up about career paths in #tech4wildlife...

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Soumya Bhattacharyya

8 May 2023 2:43am

Wildlabers, 

I have been randomly trying a few things here and there for a career switch. But so far it has been in bits and pieces. Meanwhile, I have started pursuing Masters in AI and ML hoping that might bring some tractions to my career search/ switch. 

Meanwhile, I keep at it while being in my current job. 

Thanks, 

Soumya

Savithri K

20 April 2024 5:36pm

Unfortunately , not yet . Still digging into it in my free time. And trying to setup a camera in my bord feeder for a mini conservation project in my back garden :) 

Savithri K

20 April 2024 5:41pm

Hi Soumya , 

 

Interested to know if you are pursuing distance education in ML while at your current job. I would love to hear more about your journey on course specifics and the platform you use to complete the education, and I would love to hear if you have any recommendations based on your experiences.

Thanks, 
Savi

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