AI can 'save' endangered animals

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being widely used to monitor biodiversity and increase efforts to help endangered species.

The potential of artificial intelligence in the field of animal conservation

Unlike conventional methods that can disrupt ecosystems or require significant time, effort, and resources, artificial intelligence is capable of quickly and efficiently analyzing large amounts of data in the world. real.

The artificial intelligence system can identify bird species from tropical forest sound recordings. (Photo: Ulrich Hollmann/Getty).

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions provide conservationists around the world with unprecedented tools to help identify, monitor, track and ultimately protect wild animals and plants. .

Wildlabs.net (wildlife conservation network applying information technology) recently released a report, in which artificial intelligence is one of the top 3 emerging technologies in the field of conservation.

The report states: 'AI can learn to identify photos of rare species among thousands of results, or accurately identify animal calls after hours of recording in the field, significantly reducing labor. manually to collect conservation data'.

AI is currently promoting its abilities in protecting many rare animal species such as humpback whales, snow leopards, koalas, etc. At the same time, supporting the work of scientists, researchers and rangers in important missions: from anti-poaching to species monitoring. With machine learning systems, which use algorithms and models to learn, understand and adapt, artificial intelligence can do the work of hundreds of people, achieving results faster and more economically. more cost and more effective.

The use of artificial intelligence technology in animal conservation can also create awareness among the public about the status of animal species and the need to protect them.

Artificial intelligence drives important discoveries about biodiversity

Mr. Carl Chalmers, who researches machine learning at the non-profit organization Conservation AI (headquartered in Liverpool, UK) uses AI technology for many different ecological projects . "We will never achieve the United Nations' goals of protecting endangered species." 

Species are disappearing at a rate hundreds to thousands of times faster than millions of years ago. According to statistics, about 1 million species are on the brink of extinction. In 2020, the United Nations set a goal of protecting at least 30% of Earth's lands and oceans by the end of the decade.

Mr. Nicolas Miailhe, founder of The Future Society - an international non-profit organization aimed at better management of artificial intelligence, based in Paris - said that AI is "not perfect" but can promote push important discoveries.

AI tools can analyze video footage and still images to identify and track wildlife activity. (Photo: AGAMI/Alamy).

Ecologist Jörg Müller at the University of Würzburg, Germany, and colleagues have shown that artificial intelligence tools can help quantify biodiversity in tropical forests by identifying animal species. from recordings.

In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers used AI to analyze animal sounds in Chocó - a region in Ecuador known for its rich species diversity.

They placed recorders in 43 locations representing different stages of nature's recovery: forests that had not been disturbed by humans, forest areas that had been deforested but then abandoned and began to regenerate. born, deforested areas then became cocoa plantations and grasslands. They showed the audio files to experts and identified 183 species of birds, 41 species of amphibians and 3 species of mammals.

The researchers also fed their recordings to a type of AI model called a convolutional neural network (CNN) , which was developed to identify bird sounds. Ecologist Müller said artificial intelligence is ready to identify animals in the tropics more comprehensively than based on sound alone. All that is needed is more training data collected by humans.

Researchers at Conservation AI have developed models that can scan through footage and images from drones or camera traps to identify wildlife, including critically endangered species and Track animal movements.

They have built a free online platform that uses this technology to automatically analyze images, video or audio files, including data from real-time camera trap footage and other sensors used by users. approved can be uploaded. Users have the option to receive e-mail notifications when a species of interest is detected in the footage they have uploaded.

To date, Conservation AI has processed more than 12.5 million images and discovered more than 4 million animals across 68 species, including endangered pangolins in Uganda, gorillas in Gabon and apes. orangutans in Malaysia.

"This platform can process tens of thousands of images per hour, in contrast to humans who can only process a few thousand images at best," said researcher Paul Fergus. " AI's data processing speed has can enable conservationists to protect vulnerable species from unexpected threats - such as poaching and fire - quickly."

As well as real-time biodiversity monitoring, artificial intelligence can be used to model the impact of human activities on ecosystems and reconstruct historical changes. Researchers used AI to explore how a century of environmental degradation in freshwater ecosystems has led to biodiversity loss.

Ms. Luisa Orsini - evolutionary systems biology researcher at the University of Birmingham, UK, said: "Long-term data plays a key role in linking changes in biodiversity with environmental change. environment and identify achievable conservation goals".

Ms. Orsini and colleagues developed a model linking biodiversity to historical environmental changes using AI. The team obtained genetic material left behind by plants, animals and bacteria in the sediment of a lake over the past century. Sediment layers were dated and environmental DNA was extracted for sequencing.

Scientists then combined these data with climate information from weather stations and chemical pollution data from direct measurements and national surveys, using engineered artificial intelligence. to process many different types of information. The goal is to identify correlations between data chaos.

According to Ms. Orsini, the main benefit of using AI is that it is hypothesis-free and data-driven . Artificial intelligence learns from past data and predicts future trends in biodiversity with high accuracy.

Artificial intelligence helps monitor changes in animal populations in the area

In the UK, AI is being used for the first time to help understand the condition and causes of declining hedgehog populations.

Images of mammals spread across the country, from urban parks and private gardens to forests and farmland, will be captured by cameras and then trained by AI to analyze them. especially wild animals and humans.

Artificial intelligence was used to produce estimates of hedgehog populations in different habitats across England. (Photo: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images)

In this way, the UK's National Hedgehog Monitoring Program (NHMP) hopes to provide estimates of hedgehog populations in different habitats across the UK, thereby revealing how they change from year to year. year.

Organizations such as the British Hedgehog Conservation Society (BHPS) say this will provide important insights into the factors causing declines in hedgehog numbers and allow conservationists to take the necessary measures to reverse the problem. reverse this situation.

Dr. Henrietta Pringle - NHMP coordinator at PTES shared that in the past, researching and monitoring hedgehogs faced many difficulties and limitations, but now, thanks to AI tools, it has become easier. This is extremely useful for long-term conservation of hedgehogs.