WWF, in collaboration with Google and other organizations, leverages artificial intelligence to efficiently manage extensive camera trap data for wildlife conservation.
Main Points:
- Project Inception: After the devastating 2020 bushfires in Australia, WWF launched the Eyes on Recovery initiative using over 1,000 camera traps to monitor wildlife recovery.
- Data Management Challenge: The project gathers millions of images, many of which are false triggers, requiring substantial time to sort through manually.
- AI Integration: The introduction of the Wildlife Insights platform, powered by AI, significantly reduces data analysis time, quickly identifying relevant wildlife images and aiding conservation efforts.
Summary:
Following the catastrophic bushfires that ravaged Australia in 2020, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) initiated the Eyes on Recovery project, setting up a vast network of camera traps to track and support the recovery of native wildlife. This immense effort generated over seven million images, posing a significant challenge in data management due to the high volume of non-relevant captures, like empty shots triggered by natural elements.
To address this, WWF partnered with Google and other conservation bodies to develop Wildlife Insights, an innovative AI-driven platform designed to streamline the process of filtering and analyzing camera trap data. This technology automatically excludes blank images, pinpoints those with wildlife presence, and even identifies species, drastically cutting down the time required for data processing. This acceleration is crucial for timely, informed decision-making in conservation, proving particularly beneficial for species such as the endangered greater glider, which showed positive responses to emergency interventions like artificial nest boxes.
Source: How artificial intelligence buys valuable time to protect wildlife
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