Hi Cathy

I can't help personally but on seeing your post reached out to a contact who's previously been involved in the British Cartographic Society in case they had any ideas. Their advice:

"I would suggest that she becomes a member of British Cartographic Society (£45 or so) and then writes for/becomes an editor. Then, she will be able to apply for a funding budget for travel... as long as she also writes about the conference! It's a bit long winded, but I am sure that just being an Editor would be an advantage to her anyway."

I hope that helps (or that you find an easier way to get to the conference :D ) - good luck!



Here's their website - 

I don't have an easy solution or a specific recommendation, but I try to track all the systems that do at least one of those things here:

https://agentmorris.github.io/camera-trap-ml-survey/#camera-trap-systems-using-ml

That's a list of camera trap analysis / data management systems that use AI in some way, but in practice, just about every system available now uses AI in some way, so it's a de facto list of tools you might want to at least browse.

AFAIK there are very few tools that are all of (1) a data management system, (2) an image review platform, and (3) an offline tool.  If "no Internet access" still allows for access to a local network (e.g. WiFi within the ranger station), Camelot is a good starting point; it's designed to have an image database running on a local network.  TRAPPER has a lot of the same properties, and @ptynecki (who works on TRAPPER) is active here on WILDLABS.

Ease of use is in the eye of the beholder, but I think what you'll find is that any system that has to actually deal with shared storage will require IT expertise to configure, but systems like Camelot and TRAPPER should be very easy to use from the perspective of the typical users who are storing and reviewing images every day.

Let us know what you decide!

Hi Frida. 

We are currently doing soil monitoring for ecological restoration in Australia with an organization called Bush Heritage Australia. It's been ongoing for about four years and it's in collaboration with BHA and also Monash University's soil science department. There's more info about the project here:

 

Awesome project!! 

My own curiosity here - how many different bat species are there in Zimbabwe?

Hi @lucianofoglia 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with the community. What you've touched on resonates with a number of users and developers (looking at you @Rob_Appleby) who share similar concerns and are keen to address these issues.

As a beliver in open sourcing conservation technologies, to mitigate issues you've noted (maintenance of technologies / solutions, repairability, technical assistance to name but a few), really the only way to achieve this in my eyes is through the promotion of openness to enable a wide range of both technical and non-technical users to form the pool of skills needed to react to what you have stated. If they can repair a device, or modify it easily, we can solve the waste issue and promote reusability, but first they need access to achieve this and commerical companies typically shy away from releasing designs to protect against their IP that they keep in house to sell devices / solutions. 

I would think for an organisation to achieve the same the community would need to help manufacturers and developers open and share hardware designs, software, repairability guides etc, but the reality today is as you have described.

One interesting conversation is around a kitemark, i.e a stamp of approval similar to the Open Source Hardware Association's OSHWA Certification), but as it's not always hardware related, the kitemark could cover repairability (making enclosure designs open access, or levels of openness to start to address the issue). Have a look at https://certification.oshwa.org/ for more info. I spent some time discussing an Open IoT Kitemark with http://www.designswarm.com/  back in 2020 with similar values as you have described - https://iot.london/openiot/

You may want to talk more about this at the upcoming Conservation Optimism Summit too. 

Happy to join you on your journey :)

Alasdair (Arribada)
 

Me and @Hubertszcz are working on biodiversity monitoring for habitat restoration on the Azuero penninsula in August. I don't have any like paid research opportunities i know of myself, but if you find yourself in panama, im sure they can use help!

This is an area where my system would do very well in:



 

Also, as you mention areas dominated by humans, there is a high likelyhood that there will be enough power there to support this system, which provides very high performance and flexibility but it comes with a power and somewhat a cost cost.



Additionally, it's life blood comes with generating alerts and making security and evidence gathering practical and manageable, with it's flexible state management system.



Ping me offline if you would like to have a look at the system.

Hi Amit,

The most important thing is that the livestock owners contact you as soon as possible after finding the carcass. We commonly do two things if they contact us on the same day or just after the livestock was killed:

1. Use CyberTracker (or similar software) on an Android smart phone to record all tracks, bite marks, feeding pattern and any other relevant signs of the reason for the loss with pictures and GPS coordinates. [BTW, Compensation is a big issue -- What do you do if the livestock was stolen? What do you do if a domestic animal killed the livestock? What if it died from disease or natural causes and was scavenged upon by carnivores afterwards?]
2. In the case of most cats, they would hide the prey (or just mark it by covering it with grass or branches and urinating in the area). In this case you can put up a camera trap on the carcass to capture the animal when it returns to its kill (Reconyx is good if you can afford it - we use mostly Cuddeback with white flash). This will normally only work if the carcass is fresh (so other predators would not be able to smell it and not know where it is yet), so the camera only has to be up for 3-5 days max.

This is not really high-tech, but can be very useful to not only establish which predator was responsible (or if a predator was responsible), but also to record all the evidence for that.

Fire detection is a sort of broad idea.  Usually people detect the products of fire, and most often this is smoke.

Many home fire detectors in the US use a radioactive source and measure the absorption of the radiation by the air.  More smoke means more absorption.

For outdoor fire detection, PM2.5 can be a very good smoke proxy, and outdoor PM2.5 sensing is pretty accessible.

This one is very popular in my area. 

Great work @CathyNj kindly check out the below opportunity. I reckon you may find it useful for your work. 

"Join Planet Ed and The Nature Conservancy for the Planet Media Call for Pitches to Shape the Future of Climate Education for Kids!"