In recent years, drone technologies have been explored for a range of applications in conservation including (but not limited to) mapping, biodiversity inventories, antipoaching patrols, wildlife tracking, and fire monitoring. The rise of customizable, open-source drones like those of ArduPilot and OpenROV hold promise for more effective conservation applications, and combined with other monitoring sensors and devices, they are capable of collecting high-resolution data quickly, noninvasively, and at relatively low cost.
However, challenges remain in putting these tools to use. A recent paper reviewing 256 conservation drone projects highlighted some of these major obstacles, ranging from unintended social and ecological consequences of drone operations to still prohibitive costs, both in terms of hardware and in terms of storing and processing large volumes of data. The longstanding challenge of power/battery life remains as well.
If you're considering trying out drones for yourself, and want to explore the possibilities and understand the major conversations happening around this technology, check out these beginner's resources and conversations from across the WILDLABS platform:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Conservation Technology User Guidelines Issue 5: Drones, World Wildlife Fund | Drones, best practices, ethics, regulations, case studies
- WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Recording: Drones, Craig Elder, Dr. Claire Burke, and Gabriel Levin | Drones, thermal camera, wildlife crime, ML, biologging
- New Paper: Drones and Bornean Orangutan Distribution, Sol Milne | Drones, data analysis, citizen science, community science, primates
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- Curious about radio-tracking with drones? | Wildlife Drones, Biologging (5 replies)
- Drones for GIS Best practice Document | Adrian Hughes, Drones (10 replies)
- WWF Conservation Technology Series: Drones in Conservation | Aurélie Shapiro, Drones (7 replies)
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- How do I use a drone to capture radio-tracking data? | Debbie Saunders, Tech Tutors
- How do I choose the right drone for my conservation goals? | Shashank Srinivasan, Tech Tutors
- How do I strategically allocate drones for conservation? | Elizabeth Bondi, Tech Tutors
Want to know more about using drones, and learn from experts in the WILDLABS community? Make sure you join the conversation in our Drones group!
*Header photo: Parker Levinson, Point Blue Conservation Science
American Museum of Natural History
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- @CourtneyShuert
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I am a behavioural ecologist and eco-physiologist interested in individual differences in marine mammals and other predators
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- @TaliaSpeaker
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WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US
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- @Tracks_Ecology
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Ecological Consultant focussing on the use of UAV and GIS to advance applied ecological reasearch
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Wildlife Drones
Wildlife Drones has developed the world’s most innovative radio animal-tracking system using drones so you can track your radio-tagged animals like never before.
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- @Rob_Appleby
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Wild Spy
Whilst I love everything about WILDLABS and the conservation tech community I am mostly here for the badges!!
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My main interest is in the application of geospatial technology for ecology and conservation
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- @jcaris
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Smith College & Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University
Senior Drone Data Scientist, Tufts University; Former Director of the Spatial Analysis Lab at Smith College. Teaching, learning, and collaborating with brilliant students & faculty
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I help conservation scientists spend less time on boring stuff.
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2023 Bachelor Degree Graduate from the College of African Wildlife Management, Mweka.
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Director of Icoteq Ltd, an electronics and software design consultancy developing wireless products and solutions to organisations working in the conservation, wildlife monitoring and anti-poaching sectors. Developers of the TagRanger® novel wildlife tracking products.
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- @ahmedjunaid
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Zoologist, Ecologist, Conservation Biologist
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi David - have you seen this opportunity? It may be a good one to apply to for support (the Darwin Initiative). |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Wildlife Crime | 3 days 10 hours ago | |
Thank you for elaborating, @evebohnett ! And for the heads ups! |
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Camera Traps, Drones | 1 month ago | |
@PaulAllin Thanks for your valuable insights. Zenmuse H20N seems to be very powerful and useful in this case. However, I'm looking for a more affordable option for a self-funded... |
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Drones, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 3 months 2 weeks ago | |
We will be conducting in-person demos of our cutting-edge drone technology in the US this year! 🇺🇸 If you're interested in experiencing... |
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Biologging, Drones, Remote Sensing & GIS, Software and Mobile Apps | 3 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hi Danilo. you seem very passionate about this initiative which is a good start.It is an interesting coincidence that I am starting another project for the coral reefs in the... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Camera Traps, Citizen Science, Climate Change, Community Base, Connectivity, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Sensors, Software and Mobile Apps, Wildlife Crime | 4 months ago | |
Forgot to mention this wildlife drone group - |
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Drones, eDNA & Genomics | 4 months 1 week ago | |
Hi, I have used a commercial company for drone work for my PhD and they were willing to give me a significant discount for research purposes. One thing to consider is that in SA a... |
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Drones, East Africa Community | 4 months 1 week ago | |
Hi!I would take a look at Although developed for camera trap imagery, it is by no means restricted to such.Cheers,Lars |
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Camera Traps, Community Base, Data management and processing tools, Drones, Emerging Tech, Remote Sensing & GIS, Software and Mobile Apps | 4 months 1 week ago | |
In what ways can drones contribute to linking individuals, communities, and small-scale producers in rural areas, facilitating the support... |
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Drones, Remote Sensing & GIS | 5 months 3 weeks ago | |
@dmorris joined Variety Hour to give us 'a bunch of lightning talks inside a lightning talk'. Check out the recording to get a whirlwind... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Remote Sensing & GIS | 5 months 3 weeks ago | |
@caseyslaught is a Full-stack engineer with Virunga National Park, and he's built a handy tool to host, visualize, and... |
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Drones | 5 months 3 weeks ago | |
The link above does not seem to work but this does: https://wildlabs.net/sites/default/files/community/files/drones_for_gis_-_best_practice_v2.0.pdf |
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Drones | 6 months 1 week ago |
Insight; a secure online platform designed for sharing experiences of conservation tool use.
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A secure platform designed for those working to monitor & protect natural resources. Insight facilitates sharing experience, knowledge & tools to increase efficiency & effectiveness in conservation. By sharing we reduce time & money spent to find, test, & implement solutions.
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Hi Doug,
I've got a Mavic 3T. Happy to chat about this and other fox related issues in Melb.
Mike.
26 August 2023 1:09am
We have recently applied funding for one of these to find bird nests on the tundra in Greenland.
29 August 2023 12:42pm
Hi Doug,
we are a young startup that uses AI as a tool in nature and wildlife conservation. At the moment we develop a drone with on-board AI (for object detection) and thermal and "normal" camera. If you want to know more about the project, you can contact me [email protected]. I would be happy to help you.
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During Andrew's talk, @dmorris put out a call in the chat that might be relevant to folks catching up on the video, so I'll drop it here too:
Re: Andrew's fish work... part of the reason I got in touch with Andrew a few weeks ago is that I'm trying to keep track of public datasets and public models for marine video that have basically this gestalt (video where fish look fishy-ish). I think we're getting close to enough public data to train a general-purpose model that will work well across ecosystems. My running list of datasets is here:
https://lila.science/otherdatasets#images-marine-fish
Let me know if folks know of others!
There are also a grand total of two public models that I'm aware of that sort of fall into this category... one is Andrew's:
https://github.com/ajansenn/KakaduFishAI
The other is:
https://github.com/warplab/megafishdetector
If folks know of other publicly-available models, let me know about those too!
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Definitely interested! I'm in the ecoacoustics/acoustic monitoring space, working at Rainforest Connection and Arbimon.
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Carly, that would be great! Thanks! I work with soundscapes and love the work of Rainforest Connection! I'll send you an email (@CUNY) to coordinate!
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Hi Donya! You might check out the Conservation Tech Directory to see what projects/organizations/tools best align with your interests and skills.
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Interesting project - “Our main goal for this is to develop a nature-friendly drone concept for wildlife monitoring,” Hassanalian said. “Traditional drones are often disruptive to ecosystems due to issues such as sound and unfamiliarity, so developing quieter, natural-looking alternatives could help wildlife monitoring and research.”
Drone imagery management software
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GeoNadir and OpenDroneMap might be of interest for drones?
The Conservation Tech Directory might have some additional projects/tools of note.
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