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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

Join the sixth annual #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge!

Ellie Warren

24 February 2021 9:03pm

Hi Wildlabbers, It's time for our sixth annual #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge! We'd like to invite all of you in the WILDLABS community to share...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

1 March 2021 12:04pm

Hi everyone!

Just dropping in to say we've seen more than 150 photos shared in this year's #tech4wildlife photo challenge already! We often hear it's really hard to get an idea of what the conservation tech landscape is like - who is doing what. This photo challenge is one of the ways we try to break down those information barriers and bring everyone together. If you're curious about what's being shared this year, you can check out our curated feed on twitter here:

https://twitter.com/WILDLABSNET/timelines/703260604908314625

We'd love to have your projects added into our big #tech4wildlife celebration. If you haven't already, take a photo and tell us a bit about what you're working on! Share it on Twitter with the hashtag #tech4wildlife and tag us @WILDLABSNET. As always, we'll count down our favourites on March 3, World Wildlife Day. 

Steph 

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discussion

Interview opportunity about your experience in researching

iJc

18 February 2021 6:46pm

Dear Wildlabs members We're a group of students from the University of Puerto Rico and we're conducting a market investigation with the National Science Foundation...

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Carly Batist

26 February 2021 4:23pm

@StephODonnell perhaps tweeting this out from the Wildlabs account to increase coverage?

Froilán and Edgardo - what do you mean by 'experienced'? That can mean different things to different people so just wanted to clarify the term. Thanks!

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discussion

Recruiting interview participants re. conservation+communities+tech

Matt Ziegler

13 January 2021 7:06am

Hi everyone -   I'm at student at the University of Washington who's starting up a cross-sectional interview study about conservation+communities+technology,...

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Matt Ziegler

17 January 2021 1:12am

Someone also just sent me this super relevant FAO report on ICT's / phones / technology use in small scale fisheries: http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cb2030en

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discussion

What have you been working on recently (2020)?

Stephanie O'Donnell

6 November 2020 4:46pm

Hi Wildlabbers! How's everyone doing? Renewing an old thread because I'd love to hear about what you're working on at the moment - what's getting you up in...

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discussion

Weekly #Tech4Wildlife highlights from Twitter

Ellie Warren

7 October 2020 8:27pm

Hi Wildlabbers, We're trying out a new way to bring together all of the cool #tech4wildlife content we find on Twitter, and our community here on WILDLABS...

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Ellie Warren

20 November 2020 11:13pm

Hi Wildlabbers,

It's already time for more weekly tweet highlights! 

First, we were excited to see Season 1 Tech Tutor's Sara Beery getting tweeted about the MegaDetector in action! 

Yay #MegaDetector!! Vertically aligned animals was one of the things we targeted with the v4 release, great to see that it helped https://t.co/4kW9blGQZ8

— Sara Beery (@sarameghanbeery) November 19, 2020

Next, we loved seeing another Season 1 Tech Tutor, Daniel Situnayake repping his episode in this tweet about some very fun backyard birdwatching AI!

The @BirdBuddy_ is a super cute AI bird feeder that recognizes birds by their image or their song. It would be even cooler if inference happened on-device!

p.s. to train your own birdsong recognizer, see my @WILDLABSNET tutorial:https://t.co/3gl2MJNm1Nhttps://t.co/oTaC3BxOZe

— Daniel Situnayake #BlackLivesMatter (@dansitu) November 19, 2020

Community member Shah Selbe shared an article about this unique sensor deployment strategy involving drones and darts - what do you guys think of using this system in the field??

Sensor-equipped darts shot from drones is definitely not a conservation technology deployment approach I’ve thought of before. https://t.co/i4C4h7oLxD

— Shah Selbe (@shahselbe) November 17, 2020

And lastly, we can't NOT mention that we celebrated WILDLABS' fifth anniversary this week!

Happy anniversary to WILDLABS! For five years, we've seen incredible collaborations and successes come out of this community, and we can't wait to see what we can build and accomplish together in #tech4wildlife in the next five years! We're just getting started.

— WILDLABS Community (@WILDLABSNET) November 18, 2020
Tweet us or post with your favorite community memories from the past five years!

-Ellie

 

Ellie Warren

4 December 2020 10:18pm

Happy Friday, Wildlabbers! 

This was a big week for #tech4wildlife announcements and resources on Twitter - here are just a few of our favorites:

Audiomoth got even easier to use - great news for our Bioacoustics community!

1. We are excited to release the new #AudioMoth 1.5.0 firmware, which saves your configurations even when batteries are removed. Enabling fieldwork-friendly time configuration, using an acoustic chime to set the AudioMoth clock from a smartphone app https://t.co/G7zBKaghFt pic.twitter.com/M8o858UfUg

— OpenAcousticDevices (@OpenAcoustics) November 23, 2020
ZSL gave us a glimpse of their Instant Detect 2 satellite camera and sensor system:

#InstantDetect2 is starting to look really good. Next year should be very exciting!#Tech4wildlife https://t.co/ZfmlNVivvF

— SamSeccombe (@SamSeccombe) November 24, 2020
Our friend Alasdair Davies shared his work creating sustainably made, recycled satellite tags:

A highlight of my career this one. I didn't ever think I'd get to join a National Geographic expedition @InsideNatGeo turning 500ml water bottles into satellite tags with @HeatherKoldewey @EmilyDuncan34 @Imogennapper and others https://t.co/iPCAwBOBAV

— Alasdair Davies (@Al2kA) December 3, 2020
The Snow Leopard Trust team shared this great resource on the ethics of camera trapping when it comes to capturing human images:

You set up #cameratraps to detect #snowleopards, but cameras detect this. What will you do?
1. Report it?
2. Delete it?
3. Blur and share it?
4. Archive it?
Read on as we discuss the ethical tight-rope of dealing with human images in @AER_ESE_BES: https://t.co/H9MfIyccgp pic.twitter.com/O37bOBA6mh

— Koustubh Sharma (@koustubh_sharma) November 25, 2020
And lastly, if you follow our annual #tech4wildlife Photo Challenge, you'll know that we're big fans of whale photos. So obviously we loved this post from Emma Vogel!

And that's a wrap on our two week research cruise! We successfully deployed both satellite and archival #Biologging tags, as well as collecting lot of #biopsy, #photoID, #eDNA and #acoustic data. It's great to be part of such exciting collaborative research on #whales in Norway! pic.twitter.com/ZcEbXVlz7H

— Emma Vogel (@efvogel) November 30, 2020
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discussion

Students looking to speak with local stakeholders

Dan Zevin

20 November 2020 5:22am

Hello Everyone! The undergraduate students in our new Conservation + Technology course at UC Berkeley are working on a project to help local communities live more harmoniously...

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Carly Batist

22 November 2020 5:24pm

Hi,

I have some Malagasy contacts if those might be of interest to the students. I conduct fieldwork on lemurs in a national park there in collaboration with Centre ValBio research station, but I know of others working in Malagasy non-profits as well who may be good candidates. Feel free to email me ([email protected]) and I'm happy to facilitate any connections I can.

All the best,

Carly  

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discussion

Tech Tutors 2: What do you want to see?

Tatjana Baleta

22 October 2020 4:08pm

After a successful first season, we are excited to be bringing you Tech Tutors: Season 2, the tutorial series that provides quick, practical, and interactive...

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22 October 2020 7:22pm

Hi There,

Nice you opened up the agenda.

I want to see more things on how to build devices, from cases to connectivity. I would like to see something in particular (a hands-on with real things and applications): Satellite connectivity.

Something was mentioned on the wildlife drones episode, I would like to see more on that, from ready to use devices to boards to build your own devices, detailed things, including estimated costs for the services, coverage and the like, an easy to roadmap to implement those things would be nice.

Of course, I want to see more on drones, that would be interestering too, there is a lot of action by applying drones for wildlife care. I am paricularly interested in autonomous ones, I don't know if there is any advance on them.

Some specialists on image sensors would be also appreciated (infrared, non-military SWIR, LWIR, etc)

Landbased Sensors + Connectivity + Drones + LWIR = Early wildfire detection, that is something that affects Jaguars and all kind of wildlife!

Best Regards,

Carlos.

Carly Batist

26 October 2020 2:16pm

LoRa/LoRawan for dummies! aka conservationists who think everyone is talking about a woman named Laura.... haha :) 

As Carlos mentioned above, this would tie in with "satellite connectivity" more broadly. 

27 October 2020 3:48pm

Hi Carly,

 

This Nov-29 will be the international Jaguar day. I am working on a massive update on my site, the Jag things, Tech4Nature or Tech4Wildlife as you call it, new devices, etc. I promise I will keep you in mind the moment I write things about LoRa/LoRaWan. In fact, I already started because I couldn't forget your comments about Laura!!! I have many things going on but I will finish it, that's a promise (for you, but specially for the Cats!!!)

 

The first point in your favor: It is great that you call it LoRa/LoRaWan. Many experts don't make that distinction.

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discussion

TECH TUTORS: Tell us what you want to see!

Ellie Warren

16 April 2020 6:45pm

Hi everyone! The WILDLABS team is planning to launch a new series of short, livestreamed video sessions focusing on the “How-To” questions of conservation tech....

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Tim R. Hofmeester

20 August 2020 2:06pm

As someone that just started using acoustic detectors to study bats, I think it might be interesting to hear more about the specifics and differences between available hardware and software solutions to monitor/detect bats.

Carlos Abrahams

11 September 2020 12:59pm

Tim,

Hi.  the easy and short answer to that question is Wildlife Acoustics SM4bat or EMtouch, with Kaleidoscope Pro software. The longer answer is.. it depends, and I'm happy to chat more if you like.  You'll need to decide between heterodyne, frequency-division, zero-crossing, time expansion or full-spectrum recording hardware systems.  Automated or handheld? And do you want to build your own species recognizers,  identify calls manually, or rely on existing proprietary (and paid for) identification software? 

Thanks, Carlos

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discussion

Take the WILDLABS Conservation Tech Survey 2020!

Talia Speaker

8 July 2020 1:06am

Hi all,  The WILDLABS team is running our third annual survey in partnership with Colorado State University as part of a larger assessment of the...

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Talia Speaker

8 September 2020 4:44pm

So far we've heard from 244 respondents based in 33 countries. They have identified themselves mostly as conservation practitioners (27%), technologists (26%), and researchers (23%). We've seen more representation from male respondents (66%) than female ones (34%), and substantially higher response rates from North America and Europe than any other region, so please help us better represent the diversity of the community if you can. Forward the survey link to colleagues and encourage them to share their experiences: https://colostate.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4VJSlNr69Kg7o0Z 

Talia Speaker

8 September 2020 4:48pm

Although discussing challenges is crucial, we also want to hear about what makes you optimistic about the future of conservation tech. Increasing accessibility of tools, a developing culture of collaboration, the rate at which the field is evolving, growing support from the conservation community, and the opportunities around big tech involvement have come up the most so far. What do you think?

Talia Speaker

8 September 2020 4:49pm

Obviously, we're barely scratching the surface here of the rich content we're excited to fully analyze and share back with you all. If you haven't taken the survey yet, now is the chance to have your say - it only takes about 13 minutes to complete. We know it's a busy time for everyone, but the more responses we get the more we can represent the reality of the complex experiences and perspectives we know this community holds. Follow this link to access the questionnaire and consent information, and let us know if you have any questions: https://colostate.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4VJSlNr69Kg7o0Z

Thank you all again for your time!

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discussion

Recommendations for low cost & versatile teaching/training supplies

Dan Zevin

10 April 2020 2:02am

Greetings Everyone, The Fung Fellowship at UC Berkeley has a little money left over from this academic year that must be spent ASAP, and we'd like to use...

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andyrothstein

10 August 2020 1:47am

Hi all,

Teaching assistant here for the Fung Fellowship that Dan linked above.  First of all, THANK you for the responses @carlybatist & @Rob Appleby.  This has been extremely helpful for what type of technology we could introduce to students.  We will report back with what we use this fall and student's feedback/comments/enthusiasm! 

One point that is  particularly relevant now is that this course will now be completely remote for the fall semester.  Given that this will eliminate any opportunity for students to have hands-on time with a physical device...does anyone have any additional recommendations specifically that would work in a remote teaching environment? 

Thank you in advance!

Andy

Elizabeth Bondi-Kelly

17 August 2020 4:03pm

Hi Andy,

My name is Elizabeth (Liz) Bondi, I'm a PhD Candidate in Computer Science at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, advised by Prof. Milind Tambe. In brief, my research has primarily focused on using drones and AI for wildlife conservation.

As an intern at Microsoft Research with Dr. Ashish Kapoor, Dr. Debadeepta Dey, and Dr. Lucas Joppa, we built a simulated African savanna environment in Microsoft AirSim, and flew a simulated drone around it. Our goal was to create an automatically-labeled image dataset for training machine learning models, but I have also used it for demonstrations in the past to allow students to find specific animals while flying the drone around, for example. The AirSim environment will likely require GPUs, but perhaps access to the cloud (e.g., Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS) could be purchased for students.

One other note, I believe Sara Beery also used AirSim for camera traps.

Please feel free to check out Microsoft AirSim and download the African savanna environment (download "Africa.zip"). Our papers (see "BIRDSAI" 2020 and "AirSim-W" 2018 papers in particular) and the dataset are also available for some more information. Please feel free to email me at [email protected] if you would like to discuss anything further.

 

Best,

Liz

andyrothstein

18 August 2020 8:40pm

Awesome thank you Liz!  We will check this resource out and reach out if we want to discuss more or have any questions. 

Best,

Andy

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discussion

Share your funniest field fails with us!

Ellie Warren

13 July 2020 10:47pm

Hi Wildlabbers, We've got a fun challenge for you this week - we're looking for the funniest field fails from our community! Did a bear chew on...

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Akiba

5 August 2020 1:42am

Here's a video and a pic of a field fail on a project we did with Dr. Meredith Palmer. We designed and built an automated behavioral response system (ABRS) where we would play a sound when a camera trap was triggered and then record the video of the animal's response to it. Unfortunately the hyena's response to the sound of a prey was to eat the audio system.

Here's a link to the last video captured by the system:
https://youtu.be/h7SsuzAeJ5U

And here' s a pic of the aftermath:

 

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discussion

Survey: Cons Tech Needs Assessment

Nathan Hahn

28 July 2020 7:17pm

Hi everyone!  I am a PhD candidate at Colorado State University researching human-wildlife conflict. Myself and several collaborators from CSU are in the process of...

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Akiba

29 July 2020 3:17am

Done. Good luck with the survey :)

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discussion

Tech Tutors Happy Hour: Thursday, July 16th

Ellie Warren

10 July 2020 6:22pm

Hey Wildlabbers, We've had a change to our usual Tech Tutors line-up, and because our next episode with Eric is being rescheduled for later in the season, we're...

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Akiba

13 July 2020 2:13am

Oh cool. Looking forward to the happy hour! I'm curious just to chat and virtually eavesdrop.

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discussion

Conservation Technology Database

Hasita Bhammar

18 July 2019 4:42pm

Dear Group Members, I work with the Global Wildlife Program which includes projects in 19 countries around Asia and Africa on combating illegal wildlife trade, reducing human-...

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mzec

27 August 2019 9:51am

Are you familiar with the Conservation Evidence database? https://www.conservationevidence.com/

It is a searchable database of conservation actions (including but not limited to technological solutions), categorised by effectiveness with relevant references. To me it sounds a lot like what you are looking for.

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