From the rainforest to the ocean, artificial intelligence is decoding nature’s most complex data patterns and is proving to be a game-changer in conservation.



For as long as there has been wildlife conservation, there has been a need for data. In order to understand ecosystem health, animal behavior and population trends, you have to be able to measure what’s going on in nature. And while there are many ways to do this, from drones to tracking devices, thermal cameras and even rangers on-foot, satellite imagery and camera traps have made study- ing wildlife movement a little bit easier. Not only can conservationists collect ample data, there’s minimal disturbance to animals. When it comes to analyzing the imagery, all that’s really needed is someone who can recognize an animal and there are many training programs to do just that.



But to really understand ecological trends, there are many creatures that are simply too small to be captured through pictures. “With very big animals like elephants, you can see them using satellite data which is great but a significant portion of the ecosystem is hidden,” says Dr Juan Lavista Ferres, who has worked in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) for over 20 years, and is the Chief Data Scientist of Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab. Luckily, those animals that are undetectable in satel- lite imagery make up for their size with sound, which is where acoustic data comes in – and in the case of ani- mal sounds, bioacoustic data. “From a noise perspec- tive, they are there,” laughs Ferres. “There is no corre- lation between the size of an animal and the sound it makes. Very small animals can make a lot of noise and can do very specific frequencies.”



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-nature-s-silent-signals">Nature’s silent signals</h1>



There’s huge potential in environmental recordings (bio- acoustics are important bioindicators —they are nature’s health signalers) and the good news is that a lot of the data is already available. At the AI for Good Lab, Ferres and his team have continuous surveillance recordings from the Amazon that go back to 1992. The problem is that there are only a handful of scientific experts who can understand what is going on when the data is visualized, and then interpret the frequencies to identify specific animals. “It’s extremely niche. In the case of bioacoustic data, you need a huge level of expertise and there are very few people in the world that can recognize these sounds and frequencies,” adds Ferres.



Another challenge is that going through all of this audio takes time. Ferres says that many of the record- ings he has run non-stop, day and night, for 365 days. “A person would need to be listening to these sounds for a whole year to get through just one year’s worth of data. Now imagine that you have multiple recordings in one forest?” There’s simply too much data for hu- mans to process manually, which is why AI is such a game-changer in conservation – it’s making research a much more efficient process. AI can learn from these experts to automate identifying and classifying animal sounds across large datasets. “We can go through all of the recordings and understand how the health of the ecosystem is changing,” says Ferrers. “Now that we have more compute and better models, we can work with these different types of data, whether it’s images, videos or acoustic data.”



<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Under the sea</h1>



One of the AI for Good Lab’s first projects using acoustic data was with endangered beluga whales in Alaska us- ing underwater sensors. “You can capture the sound of these whales, their vocalizations,” says Ferres. Because sounds travel much further than visual cues, with acous- tic data, researchers can detect (and even potentially identify) different types of whales over vast distances in the ocean, far beyond what would be possible with visual observation methods. “There are particular frequencies in the water that will be very difficult to detect without AI,” adds Ferres. “You can’t solve a problem if you can’t measure it. By doing this, we can actually start measuring the problem.”



Working with different industries and partners throughout the world, Ferres’ hope is that now that the information is in these AI models, more people will be able to use them to track animals over time. All the work that comes out of the AI for Good Lab is also open source which means all of the projects are freely available to re- searchers and organizations worldwide. “It’s a complete philanthropic effort. We give up the idea. We publish everything. All the work we do is for the societal good,” he says. “AI is not just the solution, but sometimes it’s the only solution we have.”

Botswana. Woman photographing giraffe in Chobe National Park with tablet.

Work On The Wild Side: How AI Is Helping Conservation In Africa And The Huge Potential Of Environment Recordings

Africa is the last true wild frontier in the world; its wildlife racks up more than $30 billion annually.
But, in countries such as Zimbabwe, less money is reaching the government and animal extinction is becoming a reality.
The ruthless killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe sent shockwaves around the world. It raises the question of whether Africa is getting a raw deal for its wildlife.
In 2012, the tourism sector contributed 10% to Zimbabwe’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the projection was that by this year it should have reached 15%. Statistics for this year are only available in 2016 but there has been a surge in tourists, particularly from the United States.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4085" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/20120704_0082-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
Some American tourists, though, have been caught on the wrong side of the law by participating in unsanctioned lion hunts.
Johnny Rodrigues, a wildlife conservationist, believes the biggest problem standing in the way of animal conservation in Zimbabwe is corruption.
“In the case of Cecil, an American tourist bribed guides for $55,000 to kill a lion that was at the center of major international research. There are many such cases that go unreported,” he says.
In the past 20 years, the lion population in Africa has been depleted by 30%. As of 2014, it is estimated that there are only 30,000 left on the continent.
Zimbabwe has a population of around 1,600 lions, most of which are kept in protected areas away from hunters. Between 1999 and 2009, it was recorded that 800 lions were killed in legal hunts but it is understood that many more were killed in illegal hunts.
Lions, rhino, elephant, giraffe and buffalo are the most popular targets for hunters, but some lesser known animals are also caught up in the illicit trade.
Langton Masunda, a tour operator in Zimbabwe, says poachers and illegal hunters are more equipped and better funded than government rangers. This gives them an obvious advantage over those trying to save the country’s wild animals.
“They have more sophisticated weaponry, are usually better trained and they have communication equipment that the government does not have,” says Masunda.
Not so long ago, more effort was put into protecting the rhinoceros, but poachers shifted their focus to elephants. Zimbabwe has an elephant population of 85,000, with around 30,000 of those being calves. Because of the demand in the Asian market, poachers targeted the elephant at an industrial scale.
“Water sources were contaminated with cyanide. Hundreds would drop dead and in the process other animals, which the poachers had no use for, died too. Even people in rural communities surviving on the same water sources were affected. What makes it bad is that in many cases locals in poverty stricken communities would assist poachers,” says Masunda.
Although they have a harsh penal system for poaching, countries such as South Africa are havens for illegal hunts.
“Each year, more than 20,000 elephants – possibly up to 35,000 – are killed by poachers for their tusks, which are shipped to ivory markets, predominantly in countries such as China and Thailand. In 2014, 1,215 rhinos were killed in South Africa alone, which, when compared with the 13 killed by poachers in 2007, represents a more than 9,000 percent increase in rhino poaching,” says a World Economic Forum report.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4086" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/20120704_0131-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
The spiraling poaching figures are driven by the Asian market. In countries such as China and Vietnam, it is believed the rhino horn has medicinal properties that can cure everything from headaches to cancer. Elephant tusks are crushed into a powder and used to make aphrodisiacs, among other things.
The development of rural communities is also a factor that opens trade links with the rest of the world. It makes smuggling easier.
But, in Southern Africa, there is hope that some of the targeted animals can be saved, especially at the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA) that brings together Zambia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola and Botswana.
KAZA is the world’s largest wildlife park, slightly bigger than Italy.
In 2014, on the Botswana side of the park, President Ian Khama banned hunting to preserve the animals. As an alternative, the country is investing in luxurious camps. Last year alone, it was estimated that tourism brought in $337.5 million. A few greedy tourists with rifles should not be allowed to decimate this important source of income.

Tag: Giraffe

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Work On The Wild Side: How AI Is Helping Conservation In Africa And The Huge Potential Of Environment Recordings

The Bullets Killing More Than Animals