Wildlife Conservation Technology

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CAMERA TRAPS

We live in a time where Artificial intelligence is spreading day by day .Now, AI is turning towards the wildlife conservation. A security camera system named Trailguard AI has been developed. These are the infrared cameras which are playing a vital role in detecting the poachers when they attack the animals. And thanks to its small size that it cannot be seen by the poachers .But first, there was a problem with it that these IR cameras were not able to distinguish between the heat signature of humans and animals.So, for its improvement about 180,000 heat maps of people and animals were collected. Using this data, they developed a deep learning algorithm to recognize only human. This is called Systematic Poacher Detector(SPOT). This human detection algorithm run directly from an Intel-based processor in the camera head and this device consists of a battery having the life of about one year.

The benefit of this SPOT is that it only detects the human and so the battery can be saved as it will not detect useless things. It detects the poachers attacking at the animals before they can cause harm to the animals. Once we become able to detect the poachers, we can build a system by which we can catch the poachers like using emergency alarms. This year this Trailguard AI system has spread across many national parks and conservation groups in Africa and has expanded to South America and Southeast Asia

DRONES

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Except this new AI technology used for wildlife conservation, there is another way by which the endangered species are protected with the help of technology. An Astrophysics Research Institute at John Moores University in the city of Liverpool in England is working on a data collecting Computer-based system capable of identifying animals with the help of a drone. These drones have cameras attached to them. The whole data about the animals is collected and that data helps to understand how much the animal number is decreasing due to habitat destruction,poaching or other factors. According to the decreasing number, we can recognize the endangered species and then we can take steps to save them.

But using these cameras attached drones are not up to the job. The problem coming with these drones is that when the pictures captured by the cameras on the drones are seen on computer, then it has to be decided that whether any animals are present or not and then counting and recording the results. Means, there can be many useless pictures captured by the cameras on drones. Therefore, we really need some improvement in this computer-based system

But overall, our technology has done a lot for wildlife conservation and developing more and more in this field.It has proved our thinking wrong that the advancement in technology is causing harm to wildlife. So, What do you think about it?

Can you suggest some other ways for wildlife conservation through technology?

Let me know in the cmment box.