topic: Wildtech

topic: Wildtech

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On foot and by drone, radio tracking helps rehabilitate pangolins in Vietnam
- Conservation NGO Save Vietnam’s Wildlife is employing radio tracking to follow rehabilitated pangolins rescued from the illegal wildlife trade, even in difficult terrain and when the animals burrow underground.
- Tracking these pangolins on foot and using a novel radio telemetry drone has not only allowed the organization to assess the survival of released pangolins, but also improved the team’s knowledge of the secretive animals’ behaviors and habitat needs.
- However, this radio-tracking work is vulnerable to funding challenges, as the expectation that conservation work result in published papers can make it difficult to find long-term funding for basic equipment like radio tags.

AI model maps global tree canopy heights in hi-res, with carbon counting in mind
- Scientists have used high-resolution satellite images to create a map of global canopy heights, and to also develop an AI model that can predict canopy heights.
- Tech company Meta collaborated with nonprofit organization World Resources Institute to develop the open-source map and model.
- While the map aims to establish and serve as a baseline for conservation initiatives, the AI model could be used to predict canopy heights in areas where high-quality data aren’t available.
- Canopy height is an important indicator of forest biomass and aboveground carbon stock, and is used to measure the progress of forest restoration efforts.

Drone cameras help scientists distinguish between drought stress & fungus in oaks
- Scientists have used remote sensing, spectroscopy and machine learning to detect sick oak trees and distinguish between drought stress and oak wilt, a fungal disease.
- A recently published study describes how researchers established a link between physiological traits of trees and light reflectance to monitor the progression of symptoms in trees afflicted by oak wilt and drought.
- They used the data to build a predictive model that can identify symptoms and detect sick oaks 12 days before visual symptoms appear.
- Oaks are vital for climate regulation and carbon sequestration; however, the trees face threats to their survival because of a fatal fungal disease as well as the worsening impacts of climate change.

New technologies to map environmental crime in the Amazon Basin (commentary)
- Environmental crimes like land grabbing, illegal deforestation, and poaching hinder climate action, deter investment in sustainable practices, and threaten biodiversity across major biomes worldwide.
- Despite challenges such as vast territories difficult to police and weak rule of law, new technologies like geospatial and predictive analytics are being leveraged to enhance the detection and disruption of these activities.
- Innovative approaches, including public-private partnerships and AI tools, show promise in improving real-time monitoring and enforcement, although they require increased investment and training to be truly effective, argue Robert Muggah and Peter Smith of Instituto Igarapé, a “think and do tank” in Brazil.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

The potential for tracking wildlife health & disease via bioacoustics is great (commentary)
- Bioacoustics is the passive, non-invasive recording of sounds emitted by a wide range of animals.
- Analysis of this information reveals the presence and behavior of wildlife, and can also be valuable indicator of animal health, which can then be used in ecosystem monitoring.
- “As disease prevalence skyrockets in wildlife, we are desperately in need of tools to remotely monitor ecosystem health,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Ancient giant river dolphin species found in the Peruvian Amazon
- Paleontologists discovered a fossilized skull of a newly described species of giant freshwater dolphin in the Peruvian Amazon, which lived around 16 million years ago and is considered the largest-known river dolphin ever found.
- The ancient creature, measuring 3-3.5 meters (9.8-11.5 feet), was surprisingly related to South Asian river dolphins rather than the local, living Amazon river pink dolphin and shared highly developed facial crests used for echolocation.
- The discovery comes at a time when the six existing species of modern river dolphins face unprecedented threats, with their combined populations decreasing by 73% since the 1980s due to unsustainable fishing practices, climate change, pollution, illegal mining and infrastructure development.
- Conservation efforts are underway, including the signing of the Global Declaration for River Dolphins by nine countries and successful initiatives in China and Indonesia, highlighting the importance of protecting these critical species that serve as indicators of river ecosystem health.

Spying on wildlife with biorobots: Interview with engineer Kamilo Melo
- Biorobotics combines engineering and biology, yielding robots that can mimic biological systems.
- Biorobots can and have been used in wildlife studies to better understand animal movements, behaviors and interactions between different species.
- In 2016, engineer Kamilo Melo designed two robots, one shaped like a crocodile and the other like a monitor lizard, for the BBC nature documentary series “Spy in the Wild” that captured animal interactions in real life.
- A recent study authored by Melo documents his experience of using biorobots in the field and the scope of using biorobots for scientific research purposes.

Mini radio tags help track ‘murder hornets’ and other invasive insects
- Our increasingly interconnected world is moving insect pests around the planet, introducing invasive species that threaten agriculture and local ecologies.
- But tech is fighting back: Researchers have developed radio-tracking tags small enough to attach to invasive yellow-legged hornets in the U.K. and Europe, allowing scientists to find and destroy their nests.
- Researchers are now deploying this technology in the U.S., to address yellow-legged hornets in Georgia and northern giant hornets in the Pacific Northwest.

Gundi tool gets conservation hardware and software talking the same language
- A new open-source platform aims to help conservationists and protected-area managers seamlessly integrate data between hardware and software tools.
- Currently being used at 600 sites, Gundi takes data from different sources — wildlife trackers, camera traps, acoustic monitors — transforms them into a common format, and sends them to different destinations for analysis.
- Gundi was developed with the goal of helping reduce the time and effort required to figure out compatibility issues between different conservation technology tools.

New trackers bring prairie dogs’ little-known underground life to light
- Researchers have deployed a new tracker that helps them monitor prairie dogs and track their movements underground.
- The tracker uses sensors, including accelerometers and magnetometers, and combines them with GPS technology to enable researchers to retrace the trajectories of the animals.
- Prairie dogs dig up complex burrow systems and spend most of their time underground, making their movements elusive.
- During initial trials, researchers were able to use the trackers to reconstruct the trajectories of prairie dogs while they were underground.

New funding boosts AI-enabled wildlife identification project in Australia
- An artificial intelligence project to identify native species from camera-trap images in Australia has received a A$750,000 ($492,000) grant from the government.
- The project by the conservation nonprofit Australian Wildlife Conservancy has already trained the AI model to identify 44 species from camera-trap images, from native animals such as kangaroos and dingoes, and invasive ones like cats and foxes.
- With the new funding, the team at AWC aims to scale up the model to be able to identify 120 species; the model can also be applied to alert land managers about invasive predators that are harmful to native species.
- Camera traps continue to be one of the most widely used technologies for biodiversity surveys, but the analysis of the thousands of images generated by camera traps remains a major bottleneck.

Tech to recover rainforest: Interview with Osa Conservation’s Carolina Pinto & Paulina Rodriguez
- Osa Conservation is a nonprofit organization working to monitor and protect biodiversity in the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica.
- The peninsula is home to plants and animals seen nowhere else on the planet, and is estimated to harbor 2.5% of the global terrestrial biodiversity.
- The organization uses a wide array of tech tools — from camera traps to acoustic recorders and GPS tags — to study, monitor and protect animals such as sea turtles, jaguars and spider monkeys.
- However, the harsh terrain, weak internet connectivity and the remote nature of the ecosystem are proving to be hurdles to quicker and more efficient deployment of tech tools.

On Kaho’olawe, new technology could restore a sacred Hawaiian island
- The small Hawaiian island of Kaho‘olawe is a sacred site for Indigenous Hawaiians, who used it for navigational training, religious ceremonies, and fishing.
- But the island has faced decades of ecological destruction due to invasive plants and animals, erosion, and bombings as a test site by the U.S. military.
- A new conservation project has successfully tested a novel method using AI-equipped camera traps and an aerial drone to collect images of invasive cats, which have destroyed the island’s seabird populations, in dangerous and difficult-to-access parts of the island.
- But funding for the work on Kaho‘olawe remains scarce, and the drone project is now on hold as local organizations seek further funding to deal with the feral cats.

Find the manatee: New AI model spots sea cows from images
- A new computer model developed by engineers at the Florida Atlantic University uses deep learning to count manatees in images captured by cameras.
- The model has been trained to identify manatees in shallow waters, and can be used to identify where they aggregate, which can, in turn, be helpful to plan conservation actions and design rules for boaters and divers.
- However, the model can’t yet distinguish between adults and calves, or between males and females, both of which are details that are vital for conservation and research purposes.
- The engineering team says it plans to continue training the model in the months ahead, while also working with biologists to get their feedback on how to improve it further.

‘We’re doing so much with so little’: Interview with WildLabs’ Talia Speaker
- The use of technology for conservation and wildlife monitoring increased in recent years, with camera traps and remote sensing being the most popular tools, a report has found.
- The report by conservation technology network WildLabs also found that artificial intelligence was highly ranked for its potential impact, but was ranked low in terms of current performance because of accessibility issues.
- Marginalized groups, including women and people from lower-income countries, were found to face disproportionate barriers to accessing resources and training.
- “The motivation behind this research was to capture the experiences of the global conservation technology community, and to speak with a united voice,” says Talia Speaker, who led the research.

Conservation X Labs announces merger with AI nonprofit Wild Me
- Conservation technology company Conservation X Labs has announced a merger with Wild Me, a nonprofit that focuses on using artificial intelligence for conservation purposes.
- The two organizations plan to combine their resources and expertise to ramp up the use of artificial intelligence to prevent the sixth mass extinction.
- The merger comes at a time when AI’s role in biodiversity monitoring and conservation has seen rising popularity.
- According to a press statement by Conservation X Labs, the company will “integrate Wild Me’s technology into its product offerings.”

Camera-traps help identify conservation needs of Thailand’s coastal otters
- Otters are sometimes described as the “tigers of the mangrove” in Southeast Asia, where they’re well-known to display extraordinary resilience and adaptability to human activity and urbanization.
- A new camera-trap study now highlights the importance of expanses of natural habitat, such as coastal forests and wetlands, for two species of otter living along southern Thailand’s increasingly modified coasts.
- The research team found that while otters are able to live within human-modified landscapes, tracts of natural habitat offer them vital refugia from a slew of threats, such as road collisions, prey depletion due to pollution of watercourses, and conflict with fish and shrimp farmers.
- The authors used their findings to create maps that indicate where conservationists and wildlife departments should prioritize management and monitoring for these vital top wetland predators.

‘No end in sight’ for potential of conservation tech: Q&A with Megan Owen
- For the past seven years, the conservation technology lab at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance has been working to develop and deploy technology that can automate the collection and processing of wildlife data.
- Running a tech lab in a zoo has the benefit of providing scientists with a setting where they can use the wildlife in their care to validate the data and calibrate the technology.
- Team members at the lab are also working to develop and mentor the next generation of conservation technologists who can keep up with the rapidly evolving field.
- Making the technology “low-cost and accessible, fixable, deployable and programmable” continue to be some of the challenges that the team is working to overcome, according to SDZWA vice president of conservation science Megan Owen.

Marine conservation technology hub rises from old L.A. wharf (analysis)
- In 2014, the Port of Los Angeles gave a 50-year lease to an aging wharf called City Dock No. 1 to a project called AltaSea.
- AltaSea is a non-profit project founded in 2014 that in less than 10 years has become a leading ‘blue economy’ research hub focused on renewable ocean energy, sustainable aquaculture and other blue technologies.
- Hub tenants include marine renewable energy startups, sustainable aquaculture projects, a marine seed bank, a research effort aimed at decarbonizing oceanic shipping, and other projects.
- This article is an analysis. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

‘Shark dust’ helps researchers ID threatened species in Indonesia fish trade
- Researchers have developed a new tool to identify a wide range of threatened and protected sharks being processed at fish factories in Indonesia.
- The method relies on DNA analysis of “shark dust,” the tiny fragments of skin and cartilage swept from the floors of fish-processing plants and export warehouses.
- From 28 shark dust samples collected from seven processing plants across Java Island, they found the genetic sequences of 61 shark and ray species.
- About 84% of these are CITES-listed species, meaning there are official restrictions in place on the international trade in these species.

To understand how animals roam, look at human movements, study says
- A multidisciplinary research team recommends combining detailed data on human activities, infrastructure and animal ecosystems into a “dynamic human footprint” framework.
- The study explores the potential of tracking people’s locations over time via cellphones, transportation data and satellite imagery to reveal less-visible human disturbances on wildlife.
- While promising, the approach faces hurdles around privacy protections, data availability across fields, and collaboration barriers.

Where do illegal lion parts come from? A new tool offers answers
- To trace wildlife parts to their source populations, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a web tool, the Lion Localizer, which uses DNA testing to pinpoint the geographic source of contraband lion parts.
- Its creators say the DNA-based tool is a “valuable resource for combating lion poaching, by rapidly identifying populations that are newly targeted, or that are being targeted most aggressively by poachers.”
- Most of the illicit trade feeds demand from outside the continent; demand for lion parts is high in China and Southeast Asian countries like Laos and Vietnam.
- Despite being user-friendly, the Lion Localizer can sometimes fail to generate useful information in some cases, for example where there are multiple potential source populations or because the database used to generate matches is incomplete.

No animals harmed as wildlife specimen collection goes digital in 3D
- Conservationist and photographer Scott Trageser has developed a 3D scanning system that could potentially reshape how animals are studied in the wild.
- The system uses an array of cameras that work in sync to rapidly capture photos of animals in the wild, yielding a virtual 3D specimen viewable on smartphone or with a VR/AR headset.
- The noninvasive methodology will enable scientists to conduct research without euthanizing animals; digital specimens also have the advantage of not degrading over time.
- However, the high cost and technical skills required to assemble and operate the system, in addition to its inability to gather internal morphological data, are hurdles to its widespread use.

New platform offers toolkit for companies to prove their eco claims
- As governments around the world consider new regulations that would require corporations to track their impacts on biodiversity, a new platform called NatureHelm provides companies and individual landowners with a tool to track indicators of ecosystem health.
- The tool analyzes various databases and scientific papers to find relevant local biodiversity targets and automatically pulls in data from remote tools, such as camera traps, to track them.
- NatureHelm also provides consulting to help companies choose the best tools to track biodiversity targets, and produces annual reports that allow companies to show how different metrics change over time and in response to conservation actions.

As U.S. insurers stop covering prescribed burns, states and communities step up
- Prescribed fires are a positive land management method, but when the flames occasionally escape control, the resulting damage to land and private property also hurts this conservation tool’s reputation.
- U.S. insurance companies are thus charging increasingly unaffordable premiums for coverage of this activity or are dropping the service altogether in the wake of some particularly large recent accidents.
- As a result, many small conservation groups and private businesses are getting out of the habit of using fire to improve grassland health, boost wildlife habitat, and decrease likelihood of catastrophic wildfires.
- California is bridging this gap with a new state program that insures the activity, while prescribed fire associations, where residents and firefighters cooperate to carry out burns on private land, are increasingly popping up in communities.

New AI model gives bird’s-eye view of avian distribution at vast scale
- An artificial intelligence model is helping researchers use bird-sighting data to estimate their presence at a given time and location.
- Developed by researchers at Cornell University, the model makes predictions on when and where species of birds in North America might occur throughout the year, providing information that could be vital for conservation purposes.
- The model was trained using billions of data points from eBird, an online portal and database where birders can record the observations they make in the field.
- The researchers are now working to train the model to get estimates on abundance of species as opposed to only getting information on their presence or absence.

Betting on biodiversity: Q&A with Superorganism’s Kevin Webb & Tom Quigley
- Superorganism is a newly launched venture capital firm, touted to be the first that’s dedicated to addressing the biodiversity crisis.
- The firm aims to support startups that are developing and deploying technology to prevent biodiversity loss and protect nature.
- The firm’s early portfolio includes companies that are working to tackle extinction drivers and finding solutions that lay at the intersection of biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation.

Can digital twins help save the Amazon? (commentary)
- Spread across highland forests, tropical steppes, and low-lying floodplains — all of which are affected by varying degrees of human influence — the Amazon is a complex ecosystem. Yet, it remains inadequately mapped.
- Considering the degree of threat facing the Amazon and its global importance, it is critical to develop better methods for monitoring and comprehending this ecosystem.
- Carlo Ratti, the director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab, and Robert Muggah, the co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, argue that creating a “digital twin” of the Amazonian ecosystem could potentially serve as a means to aid its preservation while fostering a regional bioeconomy.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Meet Japan’s Iriomote and Tsushima cats: Ambassadors for island conservation
- Two rare subspecies of leopard cat, the Iriomote cat and Tsushima cat, can be found only on the Japanese islands they’re named after. With populations hovering around 100 individuals each, the cats are the focus of Ministry of the Environment-led conservation measures.
- The Iriomote cat has adapted to its isolated ecosystem by developing a more diverse diet than other felids. Following its well-publicized discovery in the 1960s, the cat has become an enduringly popular symbol of the island’s nature, and locals eagerly assist in conservation efforts.
- The Tsushima cat has faced habitat degradation caused by deforestation, canal construction and, most recently, ravenous deer. As the islands’ human population declines, local farmers are working to preserve the wet rice fields that help support the cat population.
- On both Iriomote and Tsushima, roadkill accidents are a major threat to the low wildcat populations. Conservation centers on the islands aim to raise driver awareness by providing crowdsourced info on cat sightings, posting cautionary signs at cat crossing hotspots, and educating locals and tourists.

Sound recordings and AI tell us if forests are recovering, new study from Ecuador shows
- Acoustic monitoring and AI tools were used to track biodiversity recovery in plots of tropical Chocó forest in northwestern Ecuador.
- The study found that species returned to regenerating forests in as little as 25 years, indicating positive progress in forest recovery.
- Acoustic monitoring and AI-based methods proved to be powerful and cost-effective techniques for assessing biodiversity levels in restored forests, including insects and animals that don’t vocalize.
- The authors hope these methods make biodiversity monitoring more transparent, accountable, and accessible to support land managers and market-based conservation mechanisms that rely on forest restoration, such as payments for ecosystem services.

Nepal’s tiger conservation gets tech boost with AI-powered deer tracking
- Endangered tigers in Nepal heavily rely on spotted deer as their primary prey, making their conservation crucial.
- Researchers in Nepal are using vertical cameras and AI technology to track and profile individual spotted deer (Axis axis), similar to the methods used for tigers.
- However, the project has faced challenges, including low recapture rates and difficulty in distinguishing individual deer in the wild.

Origami-inspired sensor platforms tumble like leaves to study forests
- Scientists have developed a tiny, lightweight, shape-shifting platform that can hold a variety of environmental sensors and be dropped from drones to study far-flung locations.
- The design for the platforms, known as microfliers, was inspired by origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.
- Each microflier can snap between two shapes while in the air, allowing them to have different trajectories and thus disperse across a larger area when they land.
- Though they haven’t been used in any scientific studies yet, microfliers could be useful for the large-scale deployment of environmental sensors measuring and transmitting data on pressure, temperature, humidity, or lighting conditions, among others.

Taking the global pulse of biodiversity monitoring: Q&A with Andrew Gonzalez
- A group of scientists have put forward a proposal to set up a global network that centralizes biodiversity monitoring and facilitates seamless sharing of data.
- The group wants its proposed Global Biodiversity Observing System (GBiOS) to function similarly to the network of local weather monitoring stations across the world, whose data are used to analyze and monitor climate change.
- While the technology being used to monitor biodiversity has become more sophisticated over the years, there still exists a void in getting different communities to work together to address the broader challenges in dealing with the biodiversity crisis.
- “We would not only federate people who are working together more effectively, but also fill many of the gaps in the data that currently exist in the biodiversity field,” Andrew Gonzalez, who is leading the proposal for GBiOS, told Mongabay.

Applications open for Airbus’s ‘Satellites for Biodiversity Award’
- The second edition of the “Satellites for Biodiversity Award” has been announced by the Airbus Foundation and the Connected Conservation Foundation.
- The two organizations are accepting applications until Dec. 15 for an award to support the use of high-resolution satellites for monitoring, tracking and protecting global biodiversity.
- Winners will receive access to Airbus’s high-resolution Pléiades and Pléiades Neo satellites, along with access to global mapping software from Esri and funding of $6,000.
- Previous winners include a project to map elephant habitats in Sai Yok National Park in Thailand, and community-led efforts to use drones and satellites to save tree kangaroos in Papua New Guinea.

Swab a leaf and find a species. Or 50, thanks to eDNA
- A new study has highlighted swabbing leaves as a potentially effective way to gather DNA samples of vertebrates in terrestrial ecosystems.
- Researchers identified 50 species of animals in Kibale National Park in Uganda by swabbing leaves there for a little over an hour.
- This easy and cost-effective method could potentially help scientists and wildlife managers apply environmental DNA, or eDNA, analysis more widely to terrestrial settings.
- Sampling and analysis of eDNA has been gaining popularity among researchers as an effective and non-invasive way to survey large ecosystems, especially in aquatic settings; its use in terrestrial environments has, however, faced a few restrictions.

How hot are the desert tortoises getting? iButtons help find the answer
- Researchers are using a button-shaped device to gather data about desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) and their habitats in the Mojave Desert in Southern California.
- Using iButtons, the researchers are trying to understand how hot the tortoises get, and the temperatures that they prefer in the burrows where they spend most of their time.
- Identifying the critically endangered species’ temperature preferences is an urgent task: the tortoise faces threats to its survival from various quarters such as rising temperatures, habitat loss, and attacks by predators.
- With this research, scientists say they hope to find habitats that are safer and where the thermal conditions are suitable for the long-term survival of the tortoises.

NASA satellites reveal restoration power of beavers
- A new partnership between NASA and researchers is measuring the impact of beavers reintroduced to landscapes in Idaho.
- Beavers are one of the world’s most powerful ecosystem engineers, building new habitats by slowing water flow and reducing flooding, while also boosting biodiversity.
- Beavers are all the more important in an age of rapid climate change, as they produce wetter and more resilient habitats, even in the face of wildfires.
- “NASA is interested in how satellite Earth observations can be used for natural resource management,” a member of the space agency’s Ecological Conservation Program tells Mongabay.

With fewer birds seen on farms, scientists try listening for them
- Scientists in the U.S. Midwest have piloted a methodology that combines satellite imagery and audio data to study and monitor birds in croplands.
- While remote-sensing technology helped researchers understand the attributes of the habitat, bioacoustic data aided them in identifying the birds that live there.
- Biodiversity monitoring on working lands often doesn’t get a lot of attention due to the logistical hurdles involved in accessing these often privately owned areas.
- The methods used by the scientists involved engaging with farmers and landowners to put up audio recorders in an effort to be more collaborative.

In the chain of species extinctions, AI can predict the next link to break
- Scientists at Flinders University in Australia have developed a machine-learning model that predicts which species are at risk of extinction if another species is removed from an ecosystem or an invasive one is introduced.
- Trained on data on how species interact with each other, the model could serve to alert conservation managers on which vulnerable species to focus on, the developers say.
- They tested the model successfully in Australia’s Simpson Desert, where it accurately predicted which species invasive foxes and cats preyed on.
- However, the shortage of data on species interactions, along with the possible biases that arise, are gaps that still need to be filled in the model.

Where are the giraffes hiding? Predictive tracking tech points the way
- Researchers have combined tagging technology, satellite data and machine learning to create a model that predicts the potential locations of unknown populations of reticulated giraffes in Africa.
- The model also predicts suitable habitats where giraffes could be moved to for conservation purposes.
- Reticulated giraffes are endangered, with their populations declining due to habitat loss triggered by deforestation, urbanization and agricultural expansion.
- Findings from the model have estimated huge swaths of suitable habitats in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia; they’ve also contributed to the translocation of 14 giraffes to Angola, from where the animals were driven out by conflict years back.

To protect the oceans, we must map them (commentary)
- About 80% of our oceans remain “unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored,” according to NOAA.
- Technologies like un-crewed marine drones, high-resolution satellites, and remote operating vehicles are now being paired with modern digital mapping techniques to reveal critical new insights about the oceans.
- “Considering we’ve barely mapped a quarter of [the oceans] so far, imagine what we could know, what we could prepare for, if every inch was mapped,” a new op-ed suggests.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Wildlife management platform EarthRanger goes mobile with new app
- Since it was launched in 2017, the EarthRanger software has helped protected-area managers, law enforcement agencies and wildlife conservationists to collect, visualize and track data from the field on a single platform.
- In a bid to be nimbler, the software has now gone mobile with an app that builds on the functions of the web-based platform; it also helps rangers use their phones as tracking devices.
- The app has already been used to track elephants as well as rangers in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, as well as to plan the response to an oil spill off the coast of the Philippines.

Zika, dengue transmission expected to rise with climate change
- A new study foresees a 20% increase in cases of viruses like dengue, Zika and chikungunya over the next 30 years due to climate change.
- Higher temperatures are already causing the diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito to spread in cooler regions like southern Brazil and southern Europe.
- Deforestation also favors the spread of these illnesses because biodiversity-rich forests with more predators tend to inhibit mosquito populations.
- Brazil set a historic record in 2022, when more than 1,000 deaths resulting from the dengue virus were reported.

Machine learning helps researchers identify underground fungal networks
- Researchers are using remote-sensing technology and machine-learning algorithms to map and predict the presence of mycorrhizal fungi in ecosystems around the world.
- The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) is an initiative that aims to map the distribution of fungal networks to spread awareness and advocate for their protection.
- Mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with plants, serving as a vital interface for transferring water and nutrients from the soil while also storing massive amounts of carbon underground.
- SPUN is also working to provide financial and technical support to researchers and local communities to help them map fungal networks in their home countries.

AI unlocks secrets of Amazon river dolphins’ behavior, no tagging required
- Freshwater dolphins in the Amazon Basin navigate through flooded forests during the wet season using their flexible bodies and echolocation clicks.
- Researchers have combined advanced acoustic monitoring and AI to study the habits of endangered pink river dolphins (boto) and tucuxi in seasonally flooded habitats.
- They used hydrophones to record sounds in various habitats and employed convolutional neural networks (CNN) to classify the sounds as either echolocation clicks, boat engine noises, or rain — with high accuracy.
- Understanding the dolphins’ movements and behaviors can aid conservation efforts to protect these endangered species, as they face various threats such as fishing entanglement, dam construction, mining, agriculture and cattle ranching.

‘Immense potential’ in tech: Q&A with Wildlife Drones CEO Debbie Saunders
- Drones have long been used to visually document and monitor wildlife, but an Australian startup is using the technology to listen for radio signals emitted from tagged wild animals.
- Wildlife Drones combines drone technology with radio telemetry to allow scientists and researchers to track the movements of birds and mammals in the wild.
- The technology, which has already been used in Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., enables researchers to expand the area they can monitor while tracking multiple animals at the same time.

XPRIZE Rainforest finalists named for top conservation technology award
- The California-based XPRIZE Foundation that organizes competitions incentivizing innovations in health, energy and other sectors, has announced the six finalists for its rainforest biodiversity competition.
- Aimed at developing novel technologies for biodiversity mapping, XPRIZE Rainforest comes with a $10 million prize.
- Mongabay staff writer Abhishyant Kidangoor attended the semifinals in Singapore last month and spoke with Peter Houlihan, executive vice president of biodiversity and conservation at XPRIZE, to learn more about why the competition was launched and how, as Houlihan says, it has become a movement.

Virtual fences can benefit both ranchers and wildlife
- Virtual fencing manages livestock using GPS-linked collars to train animals to stay within a set boundary, similar to an invisible dog fence.
- Coupled with the removal of existing barbed-wire fencing, it could open up whole landscapes for wildlife by removing injurious barriers for migratory herds, reducing mortality from fence strikes for numerous bird species, and protecting sensitive habitats from trampling by cattle.
- Virtual fences are easily moved with a tap on an app, and can be used to improve pasture management through rotational grazing, reduce wildfire risk, and other benefits.
- These systems are cheaper than building and maintaining physical fences, and are already in use in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Norway.

Tag team effort brings tech to aid leatherback turtle conservation
- In Puerto Rico, scientists and conservationists are deploying drones and satellite tags to gather data about leatherback sea turtles.
- Leatherback sea turtles, the largest species of turtles in the world, have seen their populations decline due to poaching, habitat loss and bycatch in fishing nets.
- Two teams are now collaborating to use drones to identify nesting sites in Maunabo in Puerto Rico.
- They’re also tagging the animals to understand more about their migration patterns once they leave the nesting beach.

Drones improve counts of rare Cao-vit gibbon, identify conservation priorities
- A survey using drones has come up with a more accurate, albeit smaller, population estimate for the critically endangered Cao-vit gibbon in the border region between Vietnam and China.
- Researchers emphasize the lower estimate isn’t the result of a population decline, citing the discovery of new gibbon groups.
- The finding, they say, “feeds into our assessments of how viable the population is [and] helps us decide what conservation actions are the most urgent.”
- The survey is the latest to underscore the “limitless” utility of drones and their growing importance in wildlife surveys and wildlife research in general.

Scientists hope to tech the heck out of eDNA sampling with drones, robots
- The collection of DNA samples with the assistance of drones and robots was a recurring theme at the semifinals of a $10 million competition to identify automated rainforest conservation solutions.
- At least half of the 13 teams used drones and robots to retrieve genetic samples left behind by wildlife on tree canopies, water and air.
- As the field of environmental DNA, or eDNA, evolves, there’s rising interest in using automated technology to collect samples from difficult terrain.
- While limitations continue to exist, scientists say they’re hopeful that the gaps will be filled as the field of eDNA continues to grow.

Sounds of the soil: A new tool for conservation?
- Researchers are discovering that listening to the soil can be a way to understand biodiversity belowground without having to overturn every bit of the land.
- Studies have shown that soils of restored forest areas have both more complex sounds and more critters than soils of degraded sites.
- Soils of intensively managed agricultural lands, also appear to be quieter, indicating that soil sounds could be a proxy for soil health.
- Some researchers are also using sounds to identify distinct species in the soil, which could open up lots of possibilities for both pest management and wildlife conservation.

Air pollution sensors found to store crucial biodiversity data
- A team of scientists have discovered that two air quality monitoring stations in the U.K. also collected DNA samples that could benefit biodiversity monitoring.
- Scientists analyzed DNA samples trapped in the two air pollution sensors and identified 180 taxa of mammals, plants, birds and invertebrates.
- The findings signal the presence of a trove of biodiversity data hidden in air pollution sensors around the world.
- The sampling and analysis of airborne DNA is a relatively new methodology to survey biodiversity; experts say further studies are required to determine its wider applications.

Meet the tech projects competing for a $10m prize to save rainforests
- Thirteen teams took part in the semifinals of a $10 million competition that aims to identify technologies that would automate the assessment of rainforest biodiversity.
- During the semifinals in Singapore, a wide array of projects that incorporated drones, robots and machine learning were tested by the teams.
- The teams that move to the next round, to be announced in July, will get one year to improve their projects ahead of the finals in 2024.

Can an app help Liberian artisanal fishers fight illegal fishing?
- Small-scale fishers in Liberia are using a data collection platform to document cases of illegal activity at sea.
- Artisanal fishers have long borne the brunt of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, some of it occurring within an inshore exclusion zone that extends 6 nautical miles from shore.
- Through the use of a mobile app called DASE, released by the NGO Environmental Justice Foundation, local fishers can geotag images and videos of incidents at sea and submit them to the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority for verification and possible investigation.
- Though the app has not resulted in any prosecutions yet, fishers say it is having a deterrent effect on illegal activities.

New digital tool maps blue carbon ecosystems in high resolution
- The Blue Carbon Explorer, a digital tool developed by the nonprofit Nature Conservancy and the Earth-imaging company Planet, combines satellite imagery, drone footage and fieldwork to map mangroves and seagrass in the Caribbean, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
- The tool aims to help scientists, conservationists and governments gauge mangrove health and identify areas in need of restoration.
- The Blue Carbon Explorer comes at a time of growing interest in blue carbon ecosystems as potential nature-based solutions for climate change.

Competing for rainforest conservation: Q&A with XPRIZE’s Kevin Marriott
- The semifinal testing for a $10 million competition to identify technology that automates the assessment of rainforest biodiversity is underway in Singapore.
- The five-year competition is organized by California-based nonprofit XPRIZE Foundation.
- From robotic dogs to drones and novel methods to gather environmental DNA, 13 teams are competing for a place in the finals next year.

Woodpeckers for fire recovery? A new online tool tells you how
- An online tool maps and predicts the presence of black-backed woodpeckers (Picoides arcticus) in newly burned forests in California.
- The tool aims to aid fire managers in incorporating the protection of these birds into their efforts to revive burned forests.
- Black-backed woodpeckers thrive in the diverse ecosystem left behind by wildfires, but fire suppression efforts and salvage logging often disturb their habitats.
- Through the case study of black-backed woodpeckers, the tool aims to illustrate how wildlife conservation and pyrodiversity (the variation in which fires burn landscapes) should be incorporated into fire management efforts around the world.

A Twitter bot tracks meat production in the Brazilian Amazon
- An online tool developed last year by the NGO Global Witness aims to monitor and expose deforestation linked to the indirect supply chain of Brazilian meat company JBS.
- Brazil Big Beef Watch, a Twitter bot, uses satellite data and cattle transit permit data to identify whether a ranch where deforestation was detected is part of JBS’s supply chain.
- Environmentalists have often criticized JBS, the world’s biggest meat producer, for being opaque about its indirect supply chain and its inability to take action.
- The new tool, Global Witness says, aims to serve as a way to call on JBS to take action and for the company’s financers to stop backing it until JBS can prove that its supply chain is deforestation-free.

Targeting 3% of protected areas could accelerate progress on 30×30 goals, says Global Conservation’s Jeff Morgan
- In December, world leaders adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, targeting the conservation of 30% of Earth by 2030.
- However, Jeff Morgan, founder of Global Conservation, points out that simply designating protected areas is not enough to safeguard nature. His organization, therefore, focuses on strengthening protection within UNESCO World Heritage Sites in lower and middle-income countries, utilizing cost-effective technologies for law enforcement against poaching, illegal logging, and more.
- Global Conservation currently operates across 22 national parks and 10 marine parks in 14 countries and aims to expand its work to 100 sites by 2033. Morgan believes that this focus on existing national parks and habitats is the most efficient and cost-effective way to achieve climate goals.
- Morgan recently spoke with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler about Global Conservation’s approach.

How do you study one of the world’s rarest whales?
- Researcher Dana Wright is one of a handful of scientists studying one of the world’s rarest creatures, the North Pacific right whale.
- With about 500 individuals remaining, and its eastern population that swims off the coast of North America totaling perhaps 30 individuals, it’s so rare that in a decade of research, she has yet to see a living individual of the population, though her colleagues have.
- How does one study a creature that’s so hard to document? With tools like bioacoustics, for example, and Wright has listened to tens of thousands of hours of recordings to aid the conservation of these endangered animals.
- The team continues to develop new approaches to solving the mystery of these whales’ migratory patterns and biology with a goal of identifying — and then protecting — the location of their winter calving grounds.

The more degraded a forest, the quieter its wildlife, new study shows
- Tropical forest researchers are increasingly using bioacoustics to record and analyze ecosystem soundscapes, the sounds that animals make, which in turn can be used as a proxy for forest health.
- Researchers studying soundscapes in logged rainforests in Indonesian Borneo have tested a novel approach that could provide a reliable and low-cost way for conservation agencies and communities to monitor tropical forest health.
- Their new method, which partitions animal groups into broad acoustic frequency classes, offers a stop-gap method for measuring acoustic activity that could be used in the short-term until more detailed artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology is developed.
- During their study, they found that animal sounds diminished and became asynchronous in forests disturbed by selective logging, factors that could be used as proxies for disturbed habitats.

Feathered forecast: Tech tools comb weather data for bird migrations
- Since its launch in 1999, the BirdCast project has used weather radar data to track and forecast bird migrations across the U.S.
- In recent years, technology such as cloud computing and machine learning have helped make the work of researchers in the project easier and more automated.
- Studying bird migrations is essential not only to help protect them, but to also analyze and understand environmental health.
- The BirdCast project is now working on integrating radar data with human observations and bioacoustics to help identify the bird species traversing the skies.

Return of the GEDI: Space-based, forest carbon-mapping laser array saved
- Since 2018, the GEDI mission has been firing lasers from the International Space Station to measure aboveground biomass on Earth.
- The information gleaned from it has been crucial for scientists to understand how deforestation contributes to worsening climate change.
- The mission was supposed to be decommissioned earlier this year, with the lasers fated to be jettisoned from the ISS and burned up in the atmosphere.
- However, NASA made a last-minute decision to extend the mission after a push from the scientists involved in it: the GEDI equipment will be put into storage for 18 months, then reinstated to resume operations for as long as the ISS continues to run.

Uterine implants and underwater ultrasounds aim to demystify shark births
- For years, studying the reproductive biology of sharks has depended on capturing the animals and dissecting them.
- Scientists recently developed the Birth Alert Tag, an egg-shaped satellite transmitter that can be implanted in the uterus of pregnant sharks to document the location and timing of births.
- In another development, scientists took ultrasound readings of whale sharks and sampled their blood to detect if they were pregnant.
- The new methods aim to help researchers determine sharks’ pregnancy status and the location of shark births; one goal is to inform the establishment of corridors to protect the animals, which are among the most vulnerable vertebrates on Earth.

As conservation technology grows, so does Mongabay’s coverage
- Mongabay’s new staff writer covering conservation technology joins the podcast to discuss this fast-growing field.
- Abhishyant “Abhi” Kidangoor has joined the newsroom after working as a reporter for Time in Hong Kong and New York, covering subjects from COVID-19 to the Hong Kong protests of 2019.
- From AI to eDNA, remote sensing and bioacoustics, Abhi discusses the range of conservation technology topics he’s tackling and what stories have surprised him the most.

Bioacoustics in your backyard: Q&A with conservation technologist Topher White
- Delta, a new eco-device, allows people to record the sounds of wildlife that live in and visit their backyards.
- Developed by conservation technologist Topher White, Delta combines the tools of bioacoustics and artificial intelligence.
- Delta is part of White’s larger mission to document the drastically changing state of global biodiversity.

To save Hainan gibbons, Earth’s rarest primate, experts roll out the big tech
- As scientists and the Chinese government ramp up efforts to protect the critically endangered Hainan gibbon, technology is playing an important part in helping track and monitor the species better.
- In recent years, bioacoustics, infrared technology and machine learning are among the tools that have been used to make data collection and analysis easier in the study of Hainan gibbons.
- According to estimates, there are only 35 or 36 individuals of the species left, limited to Bawangling National Nature Reserve in China’s Hainan province.

On wildlife and the Metaverse, some ethical considerations (commentary)
- The Metaverse may facilitate even more physical events and activities to take place online, thus cutting down on carbon emissions resulting from travel.
- But it’s also known that AI language processing models this relies on will push Metaverse carbon emissions through the roof, since they require large amounts of electricity.
- A community-driven blockchain provider and cryptocurrency option called Wild Metaverse, for example, will donate a percentage of profits to wildlife conservation. But will that be worth its overall cost to wildlife, a new op-ed wonders?
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Can gaming solve a puzzle for camera trap conservationists? (commentary)
- Artificial intelligence programs for camera trap image recognition have become quite good at identifying common wildlife, but they struggle with rare animals.
- Before AI can tell a badger from a raccoon, it needs to be trained with some images, but if a species is rarely seen in camera trap photos, there isn’t enough data for it to learn, and it won’t be very good at recognizing that rare species (‘rare-class categorization’).
- However, a new commentary explains that AI are able to learn from the kind of game engine-generated, hyper-realistic animal images that feature in today’s highly advanced digital games.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

For tigers in Nepal, highways are a giant roadblock best avoided
- A new study indicates that the presence of roads, and vehicle traffic, in tiger habitats could take a toll on the big cats’ behavior and long-term fitness and survival.
- A tiger fitted with a GPS collar in Nepal’s Parsa National Park was found to avoid crossing roads by day, but to cross more often during the country’s 2021 COVID-19 lockdown.
- This suggests the animals can adapt quickly when traffic volume eases, pointing to measures that can be taken to mitigate road impacts not just on tigers, but on wildlife in general.
- Researchers say the findings should give planners in Nepal something to consider as they look to double the number of lanes on the East-West Highway that runs through both Parsa and Bardiya national parks.

Accelerating biodiversity-positive impact: A conversation with Silverstrand Capital’s Kelvin Chiu
- Last month, delegates meeting at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference reached agreement on a plan to protect and restore 30 percent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. The accord was widely seen as a positive development for efforts to address the global extinction crisis, which often struggles to attract the public’s attention and investment relative to climate change.
- Recognizing the importance of accelerating investment and innovation in biodiversity conservation, Silverstrand Capital–a Singapore-based family office–last year launched a program that provides capital, in-kind services and coaching, and other forms of support to companies and organizations that are developing “biodiversity-positive” solutions.
- “Climate action is important, but climate is just one aspect of planetary health,” said Silverstrand Capital’s Founder Kelvin Chiu. “Collectively we should widen our perspectives beyond carbon. Nature is inherently complex, and biodiversity as a metric captures such complexity more holistically than carbon.”
- Chiu recently spoke with Mongabay about the importance of biodiversity, obstacles in bringing biodiversity solutions to scale, and creating biodiversity-positive impact.

New app tells donors what communities need to stop deforestation: Q&A with Health In Harmony
- Nonprofit organization Health In Harmony has been working with rainforest communities to improve access to health care, education and alternative sources of income, and now has a new app to directly connect donors to communities.
- The organization aims to work on intersectional solutions to help communities improve their lives while also weaning them off practices that drive deforestation.
- Health In Harmony’s new app, which includes images and video, enables people from around the world to make donations to implement community-driven solutions.

Democratizing the deep sea: Q&A with Ocean Discovery League’s Katy Croff Bell
- The current expense of studying the deep seas stymies many research initiatives, so scientists have developed a low-cost imaging and sensor device to make access to the deep sea more equal.
- Developed using off-the-shelf hardware, “Maka Niu” can capture images and collect data on temperature and salinity down to a depth of 1,500 meters, or nearly a mile.
- Scientists in countries like the Maldives, Seychelles and South Africa are now deploying prototypes to provide feedback for the final product.

Podcast: A bittersweet bioacoustics bonanza
- After six years and 150+ episodes, podcast host Mike Gaworecki is putting his microphone down. The show will go on, but will miss his expertise and command of conservation science’s myriad facets.
- One of his favorite topics to cover on the show over the years has been bioacoustics, the use of acoustic recording technology to study the behavior, distribution, and abundance of wildlife.
- For his final episode hosting the Mongabay Newscast, Mike shares an array of his favorite bioacoustics interviews that illustrate the breadth and potential of this powerful conservation technology.
- Over half a million downloads later, listen to his bittersweet farewell thoughts, and the range of recordings–from forest elephants to the Big Apple’s resident dolphins–he shares, here on this page, or find the Mongabay Newscast via your favorite podcast provider.

Airbus Foundation looks to put satellites to new biodiversity conservation uses
- The Connected Conservation Foundation and the Airbus Foundation are currently accepting proposals for an award to support the use of satellite imagery for biodiversity conservation.
- The competition winners will receive access to Airbus’s Pléiades and Pléiades Neo satellite constellations and $5,000 in financing.
- The satellites deliver images with resolutions down to 30 centimeters (12 inches) and could be used in applications such as anti-poaching, forest monitoring, and species population assessments.

Lianas affect forest carbon uptake differently by region, study shows
- A new study has revealed that vine-like lianas typically infest smaller trees in Southeast Asia, in sharp contrast to prior findings in the Neotropics.
- Scientists have long known that lianas can impede tree growth, alter forest composition and structure, and reduce the amount of carbon stored in aboveground tree biomass.
- The study suggests that lianas play different ecological roles in forests in different parts of the world, and therefore affect forest carbon sequestration in variable ways.
- The study authors say that despite their negative effects on forest carbon, lianas are still essential components of natural ecosystems, and managers should apply a targeted, precautionary approach to cutting.

Tech companies work to make fishing, aquaculture more sustainable
- Several companies around the world are developing technology to make fishing and aquaculture more sustainable.
- These include the use of artificial intelligence to identify non-native species that disrupt marine food webs and the fisheries they support, and lights that attempt to attract only target species to fishing nets in a bid to reduce the capture of non-targeted species.
- With the rapidly increasing global population underscoring the need to source protein more sustainably, experts say it’s urgent to find ways to make fishing less damaging and more productive.

Forest management tool could help rein in rampant wildlife trade in Bangladesh
- The Bangladesh Forest Department has introduced a Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) to help stop wildlife trafficking in several of the country’s protected forest areas.
- The pilot program follows the success of SMART technology used in the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, where a University of Calcutta study shows illegal logging and poaching have dropped significantly since the introduction of the tool.
- According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, major gaps in information about wildlife trade chains hamper the government’s ability to stop wildlife crimes.
- Experts say SMART patrolling should be introduced in protected forest areas across the country.

New app transforms data gathering for wildlife in Papua New Guinea
- A new app, developed in-house, has made documenting biodiversity easier and more efficient for the staff of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance in Papua New Guinea.
- The Protected Areas Management (PAM) app allows staff to record observations while in the field, facilitating the use of photos and videos, and automatically logging other information such as location and elevation.
- Since its launch, the app has encouraged staff to record more species and has made it easier for female staff in a generally patriarchal society to document and share their findings.
- The TCA says its working to make the app available to other conservation organizations within the next year.

Video: Wildlife crossings built with tribal knowledge drastically reduce collisions
- The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes collaborated with the Montana Department of Transportation to design and build one of the largest networks of wildlife highway crossings in the U.S.
- Previously known as one of Montana’s most dangerous roads, Highway 93 was upgraded to include 42 wildlife crossings that were built based on Indigenous traditional knowledge and values.
- According to a 2015 study, animal collisions declined by 71%.
- Today, more than 22,000 animals use these wildlife crossings annually, camera traps show.

Podcast: Escape into nature’s soundscapes
- Mongabay’s podcast explores the growing field of bioacoustics often, and an important subset of this discipline is soundscape recording.
- Healthy ecosystems are often noisy places: from reefs to grasslands and forests, these are sonically rich ecosystems, thanks to all the species present.
- Sound recordist George Vlad travels widely and on this special episode he plays soundscape recordings from Brazil’s Javari Valley and a rainforest clearing in the Congo Basin, and describes how they were captured.
- Recording soundscapes of such places is one way to ensure we don’t forget what a full array of birds, bats, bugs, and more sounds like, despite the biodiversity crisis.

A flying robot swoops in via Quebec to save endangered plants in Hawai‘i
- Surveying and collecting rare plant species that grow on steep cliffs has been a risky affair for scientists and conservationists for hundreds of years.
- The world’s first aerial sampling system that comprises a robotic arm suspended from a drone is trying to solve the problem in Hawai‘i.
- Conservationists control the Mamba robotic arm via remote control to identify and cut samples from rare plant species.
- The tool has enabled scientists to collect endangered species from vertical terrain and grow them in nurseries.

Technology makes studying wildlife easier, but access isn’t equal
- Studying primates and other wildlife in nature has long been a challenge owing to their diverse habitats and limitations on established research patterns.
- But a pair of recent studies highlights how the emergence of new technology, ranging from camera traps to drones, has made the work easier in recent years.
- Still, exorbitant costs and lack of technical know-how mean the technology isn’t easily accessible to researchers across the world.

The force is strong with space lasers helping researchers map the Amazon in 3D
- Since 2018, the GEDI mission has employed lasers on the International Space Station to measure the biomass density of forests on Earth.
- The information helps us understand how deforestation contributes to worsening climate change via increases in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.
- In the Amazon rainforest, data from the mission have highlighted specific areas that could benefit from carbon-based conservation.

New tech aims to track carbon in every tree, boost carbon market integrity
- Climate scientists and data engineers have developed a new digital platform billed as the first-ever global tool for accurately calculating the carbon stored in every tree on the planet.
- Founded on two decades of research and development, the new platform from nonprofit CTrees leverages artificial intelligence-enabled satellite datasets to give users a near-real-time picture of forest carbon storage and emissions around the world.
- With forest protection and restoration at the center of international climate mitigation efforts, CTrees is set to officially launch at COP27 in November, with the overall aim of bringing an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability to climate policy initiatives that rely on forests to offset carbon emissions.
- Forest experts broadly welcome the new platform, but also underscore the risk of assessing forest restoration and conservation projects solely by the amount of carbon sequestered, which can sometimes be a red herring in achieving truly sustainable and equitable forest management.

Raising awareness one bird post at a time: Q&A with Burungnesia’s Swiss Winasis
- Swiss Winasis launched the bird-spotting app Burungnesia in 2016, aiming to engage the wider public in reporting bird sightings and to raise awareness about the importance of bird conservation.
- Indonesia is a hotspot of avian biodiversity, but also a global hub of the illegal bird trade, with many species captured for the lucrative songbird market.
- To date, Burungnesia’s users have recorded some 1,300 species from around 32,000 locations, including the rediscovery of the critically endangered black-browed babbler — a species that hadn’t been seen in 170 years.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Swiss acknowledges the powerful economic incentives driving the bird trade, but says change can start at the individual level by spreading awareness.

Scientists develop AI that can listen to the pulse of a reef being restored
- Scientists have developed a machine-learning algorithm that can distinguish healthy coral reefs from less healthy ones by the soundscape in the ecosystem.
- Previous studies had established that the sounds of life in a successfully recovered reef are similar to those from a healthy reef, but parsing all the acoustic data was slow and labor-intensive.
- The new algorithm has been hailed as “an important milestone” for efficiently processing acoustic data to answer the basic question of how to determine the progress of a reef restoration program.
- Researchers say follow-up work is still needed, including to check whether the algorithm, tested in the Pacific Coral Triangle, also works in reefs in other parts of the world.

‘Remix it and let it evolve’: Q&A with FieldKit developer Shah Selbe
- Conservation technologist Shah Selbe’s plan to unveil his new environmental sensor platform FieldKit went awry because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent global supply chain crisis.
- The supply chain crisis has impacted companies big and small across industries — from Ikea to McDonalds — and been particularly harsh on smaller operators like Selbe, who don’t have the purchasing might of tech giants like Apple that are scrounging for the same scarce components.
- Selbe says that while the situation has improved somewhat, it’s still going to be hard on the conservation technology community: “Don’t build a hardware product during a pandemic,” he laughs.
- He also emphasizes the need for conservation technology to be open source to promote sharing of information: “I want people to be able to take FieldKit and mix and match and create some version of their own and build on it.”

‘Amped-up citizen science’ to save the world: Q&A with Conservation AI Hub’s Grant Hamilton
- Conservation AI Hub uses drones and artificial intelligence to detect koalas that survived the Australian bushfires of 2019 and 2020.
- The initiative is now working with communities in Australia to train them on using the technology by themselves.
- Director Grant Hamilton says it’s imperative to make technology more accessible so that more citizens can engage and participate in global conservation efforts.

In Gabon, camera-trap developers find the ideal proving ground for their craft
- Rich in forests and biodiversity, the Central African country of Gabon has long proved a fruitful testing ground for camera-trap technology.
- Snapshots of species once thought extinct in the country, such as lions, have helped inform conservation policy, including the establishment of national parks and protection of vast swaths of forest.
- The wealth of data generated means there are large data sets from various projects that researchers just don’t have the resources or time to sift through — which is why Gabon has also become a testing ground for artificial intelligence tools to aid in that task.
- Key limitations remain the cost of camera traps and the fact that many forms of data capture and analysis simply can’t be done by camera traps or AI, and still require human involvement.

Hear that? Bioacoustics is having its moment, but the technology still needs tuning
- The use of audio to study, monitor, detect and conserve species has gained popularity in recent years.
- Passive acoustic monitoring has been found to be more efficient than traditional camera traps; however, the use of audio can be data-heavy and laborious to pore through.
- Technological developments such as artificial intelligence have made audio analysis easier, but conservationists say gaps still exist.

Beyond bored apes: Blockchain polarizes wildlife conservation community
- Blockchain technology’s various applications, such as NFTs and smart contracts, are being explored for use in wildlife conservation.
- The technology’s potential might be immense, but downsides such as a massive carbon footprint and the imposition of Western technology to dictate resource management in the Global South raise logistical and ethical questions.
- Most proponents and critics agree on one thing: The technology is still in the early stages for its applications to be fully understood and implemented on the ground.

Data from droppings: Researchers draw up a genetic ID map for chimps
- As part of a broader project studying the cultural and genetic diversity of chimpanzees across Africa, researchers have used fecal samples from 48 sites across the continent to create a genetic identity data set of chimpanzees across the species’ range.
- The data set supports the division of chimpanzees into the four currently recognized subspecies, as well as shedding light on historic gene flow between subspecies and between chimpanzees and bonobos.
- The data set can help conservationists determine the genetic origin of chimpanzees confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade and identify poaching hotspots, researchers say.

‘Fitbit for whales’ and other tagging tech help reshape wildlife conservation
- Tagging technology has since the 1960s helped conservationists and researchers keep track of a wide range of wildlife species.
- But tags and collars can often be intrusive or invasive, acting as a source of stress to the animal and sometimes even undermining its survival.
- In recent years, researchers have developed new tag designs aimed at minimizing any impact their work might have on animals, while also providing a richer array of data.
- These solutions range from DIY radio collars made with cat collars, to bespoke tags for dolphins and whales that incorporate Apple Watch-like biometric sensors.

High tech early warning system could curb next South African locust swarms
- The worst locust swarms in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province in 25 years (occurring in May 2022) is in the past. But the millions of eggs laid by the insects could hatch this September, the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Grassy farmland in the vast region was only just beginning to recover from a devastating six year drought which struck between 2015 – 2021, when the locust swarms arrived earlier this year.
- Farmers are now pinning their hopes on new software that will track newborn locusts in real time, enabling them to target and exterminate the insect pests before they take to the skies and reproduce.
- The software has been used in seven countries in the Horn of Africa and East Africa and is seen as a vital part of minimizing the size of swarms, which can become an annual disaster if they aren’t targeted immediately after birth. South Africa favors chemical pesticides over non-toxic biopesticides for locust control.

Smart Parks, the Dutch technologists tackling poaching with technology
- Smart Parks is a Netherlands-based organization deploying high tech and an R&D-focused approach to finding technological solutions to conservation problems.
- The organization is best-known for using LoRa (long range) wireless technology to create networks of connected sensors and devices within conservation areas.
- These are designed to help anti-poaching teams through access to real-time data such as animal locations, vehicle movements, and fence voltages, among other parameters.
- Working primarily in Africa, Smart Parks’ next phase of development is to add more sensors to tracking collars to collect additional data such as animal sounds and movement data, and then use machine learning to gain additional insights for research.

New near-real-time tool reveals Earth’s land cover in more detail than ever before
- A new tool co-developed by Google Earth Engine and the World Resources Institute is being billed as the planet’s most up-to-date and high-resolution global land cover mapping data set, giving unprecedented levels of detail about how land is being used around the world.
- The launch of the tool this week marks a big step forward in enabling organizations and governments to make better science-based, data-informed decisions about urgent planetary challenges, the developers say.
- Named Dynamic World, it merges cloud-based artificial intelligence with satellite imagery to give near-real-time global visualizations of nine types of land use and land cover.
- The tool is likely to be important for a variety of purposes, the developers say, such as monitoring the progress of ecosystem restoration goals, assessing the effectiveness of protected areas, creating sustainable food systems, and alerting land managers to unforeseen land changes like deforestation and fires.

Can conservation technology help save our rapidly disappearing species? | Problem Solved
- Humanity knows, in a best-case scenario, only 20% of the total species on Earth.
- Yet humans have, at a minimum, increased species extinction 1,000 times above the natural extinction rate, raising concerns among field monitoring experts who worry they may be “writing the obituary of a dying planet.”
- The establishment of protected areas often depends on the ability of conservationists to effectively monitor and track land-based species — but is this happening fast enough?
- For this episode of “Problem Solved,” Mongabay breaks down three of the most innovative pieces of conservation technology and how they can advance the field of species monitoring, and ultimately, conservation.

In Singapore, a forensics lab wields CSI-like tech against wildlife traffickers
- A wildlife forensics laboratory launched in Singapore last year is making breakthroughs in tracking down criminal syndicates trafficking in wildlife.
- Singapore is a major transit point for the illegal ivory trade; the nation impounded 8.8 metric tons of elephant ivory in July 2019 — evidence from which led to the arrest of 14 people in China.
- The researchers use the same method to capture poachers that authorities in California used to arrest the Golden State Killer.
- Elephant ivory and pangolin scales account for the bulk of the new lab’s workload; figuring out how traffickers accumulate this material from two species could uncover much of their methods.

Biologist fighting plastic pollution to save sea turtles wins ‘Green Oscar’
- Estrela Matilde, a conservation biologist and executive director of the NGO Fundação Príncipe, has won a Whitley Award, for her work to save sea turtles in the tiny African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe.
- Fundação Príncipe has been working since 2015 to conserve the island of Príncipe’s biodiversity by working with the local community to develop alternative livelihoods that reduce pressure on resources and protect wildlife.
- Matilde’s attention has turned to documenting and tackling plastic pollution after a conservation initiative that put cameras on sea turtles revealed just how much plastic Príncipe’s marine life encounters.
- She plans to use the award money to document via GPS the tides of plastic pollution reaching Príncipe, and to scale up a livelihood project in which local women make trinkets out of the plastic that washes up on the island’s beaches.

Where satellites come up short, drones can fill in a picture of our oceans
- Marine researchers are increasingly turning to aerial drones for a new view of the ocean, given that their resolution is much finer than that of satellites.
- While drones are used in all kinds of ways in marine studies, researchers say drones can be equipped with special sensors to track small changes in the ocean’s movements that drive much of marine life.
- Drones could be especially helpful in finding and tracking local and dangerous algae blooms, for example.
- Researchers remain hindered by regulations and cost, but that hasn’t stopped them from using drones to increase our knowledge of our blue planet.

Podcast: Afield at last, researchers head out for a new season
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we check in with a couple field researchers to find out what they’ll be working on during the upcoming season.
- For many, it’s the first field season after a rather long hiatus due to the COVID pandemic.
- Meredith Palmer’s field work involves developing new prototypes for wildlife monitoring technologies like BoomBox, an open‐source device that turns camera traps into Automated Behavioral Response systems.
- We also speak with Ummat Somjee, a field researcher based out of the Smithsonian Tropical Institute in Panama who uses insects as models to understand the evolution of extreme structures in large animals, like the tusks of elephants and antelope horns.

Rare mammals caught on camera highlight value of Annamite Mountains
- Camera-trap surveys in the Annamite mountain range between Laos and Vietnam have provided an overview of two incredibly rare and elusive mammals that occur nowhere else on the planet: the Annamite striped rabbit and Annamite dark muntjac.
- Understanding the distribution and habits of rare species is crucial to guide the development of effective conservation measures, the study authors say.
- The study found that Annamite dark muntjac are more likely to live in high-elevation forests, and in remote locations far from villages, while Annamite striped rabbits were found across a range of elevations throughout the region.
- Experts say snare removal will be key to securing the mammals’ long-term survival, and the results of the study will now help conservation managers to focus often limited resources on areas critical for biodiversity.

Bird-counting app kindles interest in Nepal’s rich avian life
- Nepali bird enthusiasts used a mobile app in February to record sightings of birds in their neighborhoods, in an initiative inspired by the Great Backyard Bird Count.
- In addition to being a tool for citizen engagement, initiatives like this help scientists assess bird population across the country, conservationists say.
- The success of the February campaign has encouraged organizers to conduct another round in May.

Researchers turn to drones for that big-picture view of the forest canopy
- Scientists need to collect data fast to understand how forests are changing due to climate change and deforestation.
- In a recent study, scientists flew drones over the forest canopy to learn more about tree mortality. The drones revealed new patterns because of the large areas they can cover. According to one researcher, a single drone can cover an area in a few days that would take a team a year on foot.
- Drones are also helping local and Indigenous communities monitor forest fires and deforestation as well as harvest resources more sustainably.
- Yet experts say that the useful tool should complement, and not replace, fieldwork done on the ground.

Can we save coral reefs? | Problem Solved
- Since the 1950s the world has lost half of its coral reef ecosystems.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that with 1.5°C (2.7°F) of warming above pre-industrial levels we could lose up to 90% of the world’s coral reefs.
- This amount of warming could happen in as little as six years.
- Experts say there’s still time to save coral reefs, but it’ll require swiftly addressing the three largest impacts to reefs: land-based pollution, overfishing and, most importantly, climate change.

For fire-ravaged northern Thailand, there’s now an app to battle the blaze
- Thai researchers incorporating remote-sensing technology into smartphone applications are helping to reduce the severity of forest fires in the country’s northern Chiang Rai province.
- In the past, only local officials had access to hotspot data from satellites; now, whenever a new hotspot is identified, firefighters and nearby communities alike receive notifications on their mobile apps.
- The app has enabled villagers, firefighters, NGOs and scientists to “join forces” in fighting forest fires, and encouraged communities to police and reduce unregulated burning of agricultural land.
- The researchers are currently working on a second app that aims to help local communities transition toward more sustainable ways of clearing and fertilizing their land than burning.

Winds of change: Detecting species from airborne DNA just got real
- In recent years, environmental DNA has enabled conservationists and citizen scientists to study entire ecosystems and to monitor elusive species that would otherwise evade detection.
- A suite of new research studies demonstrates that eDNA extracted from thin air can be used to identify a variety of plants and animals.
- Airborne DNA technology is potentially a valuable new tool for monitoring biodiversity, with particularly promising applications for monitoring rare and endangered species and providing early warning of invasive organisms.
- While a lot of work to hone the technique remains, experts are hopeful that prior advances in other eDNA technologies will help to accelerate the development of airborne DNA sampling so that it can be used in the field.

Tech revolution holds world of promise for conservation, but challenges persist
- Technology has rapidly changed the face of conservation and is now at a critical juncture where cutting edge tools are available, but aren’t necessarily as accessible or affordable as they need to be.
- A recent survey by WILDLABS, an online platform connecting conservation technology experts, shows that environmental DNA, networked sensors and artificial intelligence tools are the fields that hold the most promise.
- Yet despite the progress that’s been made, there are still many barriers to accessibility for local and Indigenous communities.
- Experts say collaboration and partnerships between conservationists, tech developers and local and Indigenous communities will be key to ensuring that conservation tech can continue having an impact.

It’s not a cat, it’s the African civet | Candid Animal Cam
- Every month, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

For species on the very brink of extinction, cloning is a loaded last resort
- Extinction is a very real and pressing crisis, threatening biodiversity around the world despite some of the best efforts by conservationists.
- Where conventional conservation methods have fallen short, proponents say biotechnologies like cloning and stem cell technology may be new avenues worth pursuing, including for reviving lost genetic diversity in endangered populations.
- There’s already proof of concept, as scientists have successfully cloned a black-footed ferret and Przewalski’s horse.
- While the topic of cloning has long been an ethical minefield, proponents point out that humans have been intervening in natural selection for thousands of years, and that we should continue to do so, but “in more deliberate, thoughtful, and careful ways.”

‘We scientists engage in soft diplomacy’: Q&A with Christine Wilkinson
- Christine Wilkinson is a carnivore ecologist, National Geographic Explorer and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who uses technology to examine interactions between humans and wildlife in East Africa and California.
- Her work is interdisciplinary, using participatory mapping to include local communities in her work and learn about how peoples’ perceptions about carnivores affects conflicts with them.
- Wilkinson also notes that human-wildlife conflicts areas are rooted in human-human conflict, often based in socioeconomic and sociopolitical contexts as well as histories.
- Wilkinson spoke with Mongabay about why hyenas get such a bad rap, her dream of a solar-powered camera-trap grid, and her work bringing together other African American scientists in mammalogy.

Could the Blockchain help save the Amazon? (commentary)
- The blockchain is a relatively new technology best known for its role as the backbone of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. So far there have been few clear applications of the technology in the daily lives of most people, but investors and entrepreneurs are only beginning to explore the potential applications of blockchain technology in other fields.
- Sophia Wood, a political scientist and investor turned conservation manager who works with Operation Wallacea, argues that blockchain technologies could be leveraged to help protect the Amazon rainforest.
- “The cause of deforestation in the Amazon is multi-faceted, but it comes down to a single issue: many governments, businesses, and stakeholders on the ground believe the Amazon Rainforest is currently considered to be worth more cut down than preserved and standing,” Wood writes. “However, new technologies like Web3 and the blockchain, which enables rapid and transparent sharing of information and funds across borders – with no government interference – may offer a breakthrough in backing financial incentives across the whole region that would encourage and enforce forest protection.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Camera trap study shows conservation efforts ‘are working’ on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula: Video
- The largest-ever camera trap study in Central America, on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, has revealed how human disturbance affects where animals live and how they’re grouped.
- Protected areas and healthy forests held a greater diversity of animals as well as larger species like tapirs, jaguars and pumas, while places with more human activity had fewer species, which tended to be smaller, more common animals like opossums and agoutis.
- The camera trap study, begun in early 2018, shows many species have recovered completely in the forest reserves around Corcovado National Park, indicating that conservation efforts over the past 30 years have been largely effective.
- Local conservation groups are now focused on creating wilderness corridors so larger species like jaguars can rebound in neighboring forests.

Conservation and food production must work in tandem, new study says
- Confining conservation efforts to only 30% of Earth’s land may render a fifth of mammals and a third of birds at high risk of extinction, according to a new study.
- If that 30% were to be strictly protected without accounting for food production activities, it could also result in substantial local or regional food production shortfalls, the researchers said.
- Instead, they propose an integrated land-use planning strategy where conservation and food production goals are considered in tandem, including through mixed approaches like agroforestry.
- Such a model would not only generate less food production shortfalls, but also leave just 2.7% of mammal and 1.2% of bird species at risk of extinction.

Boosting human and machine expertise with conservation tech: Q&A with Sara Beery
- Sara Beery is a computer vision expert with an unlikely path to science: having started out as a ballerina, her goal now is to help solve problems in conservation technology.
- She takes two approaches to conservation tech — a top-down one for solutions that can be applied to a wide range of problems, and a bottom-up one tailored for specific challenges — and works in the field to make sure they actually work.
- Beery helped create Microsoft’s AI for Earth MegaDetector, a model that helps detect animals in camera trap data, and collaborates with the ElephantBook project in Kenya to automate the identification of elephants.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Sara Beery talks about her path to conservation tech, how she combines the best of both human and artificial intelligence to solve problems, and why fieldwork is key to ensuring that tech solutions are usable and accessible.

Betty Rubio, the tech-savvy Kichwa leader defending threatened territory
- In 2018, Betty Rubio became the first woman president of her region’s Indigenous federation, a role in which she faces threats from narcotrafficking, logging and illegal mining.
- The Kichwa leader says her grandfather warned her about the risks of deforestation, so today she’s participating in an environmental monitoring project to detect illegal activities in the Amazon.
- In Peru, where only 4% of presidencies in Indigenous communities are held by women, Betty tries to encourage her female colleagues to take leading positions in their organizations.

In wildlife traffickers, the internet finds a cancel target everyone agrees on
- The Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online has removed more than 11 million posts linked to the wildlife trade on platforms ranging from Facebook to eBay to Alibaba since it was established in 2018.
- But as more tech companies join the cause, and algorithms to weed out trafficking keywords grow more sophisticated, traffickers are becoming savvier and evolving new ways to keep operating in the internet’s vast gray zone.
- With the proliferation of online platforms, and the increasing shift of commerce online since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, coalition supporters are emphasizing the industry-led approach as the most effective way to clamp down.
- However, law enforcement is still lacking because of the jurisdictional challenges when it comes to fighting online crime; although there have been some successful convictions, proponents say private sector collaboration is necessary to navigate the vastness of the internet.

Collaboration is key to scaling conservation technologies (commentary)
- To tackle conservation challenges, the sector has embraced numerous technologies like GPS, radio telemetry, satellite imagery, camera traps, and software to process and analyze data.
- A new op-ed argues that such tech must be built with the end-user in mind: their voices must be considered to ensure the solutions reflect the real needs on the ground.
- Investors, NGOs, and conservationists should also demand that conservation technology is developed in the field and is both scalable and coalition-based: collaborations like Wildlife Insights and SMART are prime examples.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Bioacoustics researcher wins top award for positive impact toward solving global challenges
- An award that recognizes scientists whose research makes a positive impact on society by addressing global challenges has been given to Zuzana Burivalova.
- The principal investigator for the Sound Forest Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, much of her bioacoustics research has focused on soundscapes, which are entire sonic characteristics of ecosystems.
- Monitoring soundscapes has important conservation applications in places like tropical rainforests where Burivalova’s work is centered.

For South Africa’s dwindling renosterveld, there’s now a ‘panic button’ app
- The renosterveld shrubland once covered the Swartland and Overberg regions of western South Africa, but its rich soils led farmers to clear it for agriculture.
- Remaining fragments continue to provide habitat for birds like endangered black harriers and vulnerable southern black korhaans, and mammals like the grey rhebok, a near-threatened antelope.
- A “panic button” app has been developed in South Africa to alert the authorities to threats facing the renosterveld, the country’s most endangered ecosystem.

For world’s rarest gorillas, camera traps prove pivotal for protection
- Cross River gorillas are Africa’s rarest and most endangered ape, once thought to have already been driven to extinction.
- Camera traps have emerged as a critical tool for monitoring the health and population sizes of the subspecies.
- Recent images have shown multiple young gorillas, which conservationists take as a sign that protection measures are working, and which have also helped raise awareness and funding for Cross River gorilla conservation.

Technology and tradition team up to watch over a sacred island’s sea turtles
- Uninhabited Poilão Island in Guinea-Bissau is Africa’s most important nesting ground for green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas).
- Local people have long regarded the island as sacred and have limited access to it, which has kept its environment in a near-pristine state.
- The island is now protected as part of a marine national park, a compromise in which local people granted researchers and some other outsiders access to the island in an exchange that included employment monitoring turtles.
- Researchers and local people now work together to study the turtles with the aim of better protecting them.

‘Superstitious belief kills pangolins’: Q&A with biologist Elisa Panjang
- Elisa Panjang spends long hours in the field studying pangolin populations, using a combination camera traps, collaring and radio telemetry to monitor the elusive mammal.
- Her work has helped raise the local protection status of the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) in her home state of Sabah, Malaysia, and she says she’s hopeful that conservationists will be able to save pangolins from extinction.
- Pangolins are the most trafficked animal in the world; their scales are used in traditional medicine and their meat is a delicacy in some countries, despite no evidence to support claims that pangolin body parts have any healing properties.
- Elisa Panjang spoke with Mongabay about the challenges of fieldwork in the Bornean rainforest, the technologies that work (and don’t work) to track pangolins, and the growing global awareness about the need to protect the world’s most trafficked mammal.

Indigenous agents fight deforestation with drones and AI in Brazilian Amazon
- The rate of deforestation has increased in recent years in the Brazilian state of Acre, which is now in the top five for deforestation risk, according to a forecast by an artificial intelligence tool developed by Microsoft and Brazilian nonprofit Imazon.
- In a study developed especially for Mongabay, the AI tool shows that Acre has 878 square kilometers (339 square miles) of land that is at high or very high risk of deforestation, including inside, 20 conservation units and 29 Indigenous territories.
- Efforts to combat deforestation include training of Indigenous people to monitor their own territories against agriculture-driven invasions.
- One Indigenous agroforestry agent told Mongabay that he and his peers rely on technology such as drones and GPS to monitor forest fires, guard against poaching, and thwart illegal invasions.

From the ocean floor, a startup livestreams the rise of coral cities
- A Portuguese company that was forged in Southeast Asia is building an underwater city for coral in Sultan Iskandar Marine Park, Malaysia, made from food waste such as rice husks.
- It is also building a pilot project ultimately leading to a 72 km2 (28 mi2) engineered reef off Comporta, Portugal, which will cost approximately $226-556 million.
- Each stackable underwater city contains a Bluboxx, a console fitted with sensors to measure the salinity, temperature and acidity of the sea, with the data then livestreamed to scientists and shared with governments.
- If no action is taken to protect coral reefs, it is believed that 90% will be extinct by 2050, according to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

One of world’s last two northern white rhinos withdrawn from breeding program
- Scientists have decided to retire one of the world’s last two northern white rhinos from their assisted breeding program, which strives to save the subspecies from extinction.
- BioRescue will no longer harvest eggs from 32-year-old Najin, which makes her daughter, Fatu, the sole supplier of reproductive material for the assisted breeding program; the program has so far created 12 rhino embryos from Fatu’s eggs.
- The decision followed an in-depth ethical risk assessment that considered multiple factors, including Najin’s age, health and welfare.
- Experts say Najin will still play a crucial role in efforts to save her subspecies, such as passing on social and cultural knowledge to future offspring, and providing tissue samples for advanced stem cell research.

Pingers on fishing nets found to save river dolphins in Indonesian Borneo
- A trial has demonstrated that underwater acoustic pingers can keep river dolphins at a safe distance from fishing nets, preventing fatal entanglements.
- Fishers in the Mahakam River in Indonesian Borneo collaborated with researchers to test the devices that emit a high-frequency sound that acts as a deterrent to the local population of freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins.
- Aside from protecting the dolphins, the devices were also found to increase fishers’ catches and reduce costly repairs to nets; experts describe this as a “win-win” solution.
- International river dolphin initiatives are now testing the devices in locations such as the Amazon, the Ganges and the Indus rivers to find out if they can be implemented at a much larger scale to safeguard dwindling river dolphin species worldwide.

Hungry like the maned wolf pup: Clips give rare glimpse of elusive canine
- New camera-trap clips show three maned wolf pups nursing and eating regurgitated food from their mother.
- This is the first time this behavior has been observed and documented in wild maned wolves, experts say.
- Wild maned wolves have recently recolonized Iberá National Park in Argentina, thanks to conservation efforts.

Project maps soundscape of human noise in northern Adriatic and impact on marine life
- The bottlenose dolphin population of Croatia’s Lošinj archipelago is increasingly faced with problems from noise disturbance produced by boats, particularly in the summer tourist season.
- Noise pollution is known to impact a wide range of marine species, from turtles to tuna to cetaceans, but its long-term effects are still little-understood.
- The SOUNDSCAPE project that started in 2019 in the northern Adriatic Sea, between Italy and Croatia, is trying to better understand the problem at the regional level and identify solutions.

Drones are a knife in the gunfight against poaching. But they’re leveling up
- At the peak of the rhino poaching war in South Africa in 2015 and 2016, poachers slaughtered nearly three rhinos a day.
- Although that rate has declined, the numbers are still disheartening and unsustainable, with poachers killing at least one rhino every day.
- Some conservationists have looked to drones as a potentially powerful tool in anti-poaching efforts, with the technology continuing to evolve.
- But experts say it isn’t at the level yet where it can meet the challenge, and that while it can be helpful, conservation efforts must continue to engage and educate local communities.

To spot wild-caught birds in pet trade, researchers zoom into isotopic detail
- The researchers’ forensic tool uses stable isotope analysis to identify the carbon and nitrogen values that reflect the differences in the diets of birds raised in captivity and those from the wild.
- For now, the tool requires more testing before being usable as forensic evidence in court, but the researchers are optimistic about its potential use.
- To date, the researchers have only developed the tool for the yellow-crested cockatoo, but it could theoretically be developed for other animals, given enough samples to establish a baseline.

To predict forest loss in protected areas, look at nearby unprotected forest
- To predict deforestation risk in a protected area, look at the condition of its surrounding forests, according to a new study.
- The study, which analyzed satellite images of protected forests worldwide, found nearby forest loss to be a consistent early warning signal of future deforestation in protected areas.
- Researchers said national park agencies can use their proposed model to predict how vulnerable protected areas in their countries are to deforestation, and prioritize conservation efforts accordingly.
- But even as these agencies work to protect forests, they should take into account the needs of local communities living in the area, the researchers said.

Empowering Indigenous youths with tradition and tech: Q&A with Dawn Martin-Hill
- Dawn Martin-Hill, a professor at McMaster University, introduced Terrastories, a geo-based storytelling app, to the Haudenosaunee people of the Great Lakes to help them protect their land and water as well as safeguard invaluable knowledge.
- A main goal of her work is to empower and support Indigenous youths, and she has also helped create a virtual reality app and adapt a mental health app for Indigenous youth to connect with their land and articulate trauma.
- Martin-Hill advocates for the integration of Indigenous knowledge into Western science and says anyone who is concerned with the climate crisis should support Indigenous people.

Tracking white-bellied pangolins in Nigeria, the new global trafficking hub
- Nigeria has in recent years become a major transit point for the illegal trade in pangolins, the scaly anteater known for being the most trafficked mammal in the world.
- With the four Asian pangolin species increasingly scarce, traffickers have made Nigeria their hub for collecting scales and meat from the four African species and shipping them to East Asia.
- In Cross River National Park, home to the elusive white-bellied pangolin, researcher Charles Emogor is working to both study the species and work with communities to end the poaching.
- “Until our government faces up to the fact that we’ve become a staging ground for the pangolin trade, I fear we’re only going to see more cross-border smuggling of scales, and more pangolin flesh for sale in wild meat markets,” he says.

What the Mauritius kestrel can teach us about wildlife reintroductions
- Using decades of data, a recent study analyzed long-term population trends for the Mauritius kestrel, a bird of prey endemic to the island of Mauritius, which was once considered the rarest bird in the world.
- While an intensive recovery program for the kestrel helped increase the population to an estimated 400 individuals by the 1990s, scientists now estimate there are fewer than 250 in the wild.
- They link this decline to a halt in monitoring efforts, which occurred, ironically, after the species’ conservation status had improved and prompted conservation donors to stop funding the recovery efforts.
- Scientists say the key to wildlife reintroduction success is maintaining post-release monitoring efforts after captive rearing, a conservation tool that can be used for species beyond birds of prey.

Creation of three new northern white rhinos embryos may indicate hope for other rhino species
- In July, BioRescue announced the creation of three new northern white rhino embryos, bringing the total to 12.
- Project leader Thomas Hildebrandt said he hopes to transfer a northern white rhino embryo into a female southern white rhino by the end of the year.
- Researchers and stakeholders are assessing whether it would be possible to employ similar methods to preserve genetic diversity in critically endangered Asian rhino species, weighing the risks of extracting eggs against the need for a backup plan.

Mycoremediation brings the fungi to waste disposal and ecosystem restoration
- Mycoremediation is the process of harnessing fungi’s natural abilities to break down materials for a beneficial effect.
- Recent projects look to restore habitat marred by wildfires, or manipulate fungi in a lab to break down toxic waste and other human-created pollutants.
- Research continues looking at the broad ways fungi can possibly regenerate soils and keep moisture in the ground, which are necessities for creating wildfire-adapted lands.

Myanmar’s snowcapped north is a haven for large mammals, new study finds
- A camera-trapping study has confirmed that the snowcapped Hkakaborazi landscape in northern Myanmar is a crucial haven for large mammals.
- The research team deployed 174 cameras in the forests and mountain slopes and interviewed local villagers, detecting 40 large mammal species overall.
- Species included evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered species, such as Chinese red pandas, dholes, Shortridge’s langurs and takins.
- The authors recommend a southern extension of a national park boundary to protect forests that are risk of being lost due to agricultural expansion and overhunting.

New research hopes to shine a light on wedgefish, the ‘pangolin of the ocean’
- Wedgefish, a type of ray, are some of the least-known and most endangered fish in the ocean.
- A new research project in Mozambique is employing two types of tags, acoustic and satellite, to better understand two of these critically endangered species.
- Researchers aim to uncover the species’ range and habitat requirements to preserve them from extinction.
- Wedgefish are heavily targeted by the shark-fin trade, and their populations have declined precipitously throughout much of their range.

Sri Lanka tagging program traces little-known paths of migratory birds
- A new satellite-tagging project initiated in mid 2020 in Sri Lanka has yielded some interesting information about migratory bird movements that researchers hope will fill in existing data gaps.
- Sri Lanka is the last landmass along the Central Asian Flyway, with more than 200 bird species migrating to the Indian Ocean island to overwinter.
- Initiated in 2004 using traditional tagging methods such as plastic and metal bands, Sri Lanka’s National Bird Ringing Programme had to wait several years to find a suitable technical partner to introduce the more costly satellite tags.
- The first season of migration using satellite tagging tracked the epic journey of a Heuglin’s gull (Larus fuscus heuglini), generating real-time data as the bird flew 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) on its return journey to the Arctic region.

Find my elephant: The conservation apps revolutionizing how rangers work
- Conservationists around the world have increasingly turned to technology to adapt and respond to rising challenges in protected areas.
- One example is EarthRanger, which collects and integrates information from several remote sensors and allows users to visualize data under one platform.
- The software solution helps conservationists with security, ecological management, and human-wildlife conflict, by streamlining conservation data into a system that helps them make informed decisions rapidly.
- While promising, the technology has encountered teething problems: lack of internet infrastructure, the need for an extensive network of sensors, and high data literacy to use the technology.

End of deforestation tracker for Brazil’s Cerrado an ‘incalculable loss’
- For 20 years, Brazil’s space agency, INPE, has run a program monitoring deforestation and fire risk in the Cerrado savanna, a global biodiversity hotspot.
- But that program may be shut down at the end of this year due to a lack of money, after a funding agreement with the World Bank ended last year.
- Scientists, civil society groups, and the soy industry have all spoken out against allowing the program to end, calling it an “incalculable loss”; soy traders, in particular, depend on the data to prove their commodity is deforestation-free.
- INPE’s data is also crucial in guiding the work of environmental regulators, which has grown increasingly urgent in light of projections that the entire biome could collapse within 30 years under current rates of deforestation.

Swarm technology: Researchers experiment with drones to battle crop pests
- A June special edition of the Journal of Economic Entomology focuses on the potential for using drones in a number of different ways for pest management.
- Proponents of the strategy believe that drone delivery of biocontrols can be used to reduce or, in some cases, replace the use of pesticides, allowing growers to take advantage of the higher prices commanded by organic produce.
- Strict airspace regulations, limited payload capacity and high starting cost are some of the speed bumps to widespread drone usage in agriculture, but experts remain optimistic that drone-based pest management strategies will become more common in coming years.

New artificial intelligence tool helps forecast Amazon deforestation
- A new tool co-developed by Microsoft using artificial intelligence to predict deforestation hotspots has identified nearly 10,000 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon that’s in imminent danger.
- Called PrevisIA, it uses artificial intelligence to analyze satellite imagery from the European Space Agency, and an algorithm developed by the Brazilian conservation nonprofit Imazon to find the areas most prone to deforestation.
- The tool, which the developers say could potentially be applied to any forested area on Earth, will be used for preventive actions, in partnerships with local governments, corporations and nonprofits.
- The next step of the project is to build partnerships with local governments and institutions to act on preventing deforestation, which is the most challenging phase of the project, according to Imazon researcher Carlos Souza Jr.

In the Borneo canopy, life thrives in surprising ways, camera-trap study shows
- The first systematic camera-trapping survey of arboreal mammals in Southeast Asia reveals a diverse and distinct community; the researchers also recorded evidence of new behaviors and the first ever photograph of a rare flying rodent.
- The team collected more than 8,000 photographs, cataloging 57 species in total, 30 of which were detected exclusively on ground cameras and 18 exclusively in the canopy.
- Since few past studies have targeted arboreal mammals, scientists do not know how human disturbances such as logging may affect them.
- The results demonstrate that surveying in the forest canopy is “crucial to our understanding of rainforest mammal communities,” say the study authors.

Sharing solutions: How a digital toolkit is strengthening Indigenous voices
- The Earth Defenders Toolkit is a growing collection of apps, resources and blogs where Indigenous peoples and their allies can come together to connect and mobilize.
- The goals of the toolkit are to support local autonomy, allowing Indigenous communities to maintain ownership of data and reduce the need for outside support.
- One successful app within the toolkit, Mapeo, helps Indigenous communities around the world map and monitor environmental and human rights information.
- The toolkit keeps the needs of Indigenous communities at the forefront, overcoming barriers inherent to technology, like participation and security.

Arboreal camera traps add ‘tons of value’ to forest canopy research
- The burgeoning field of arboreal camera trapping is revealing new knowledge about tree-dwelling species.
- Recent advances in camera technology, climbing techniques and safety equipment have brought the forest canopy more easily within researchers’ reach.
- A new study compiles knowledge from 90 arboreal camera-trapping studies in 24 countries across six continents to help future researchers plan, design and execute surveys.
- The study provides a foundation from which to develop standardized arboreal camera-trapping approaches that will allow researchers to compare data across projects and locations and reveal important global biodiversity patterns.

New index measuring rainforest vulnerability to sound alarm on tipping points
- The new Tropical Forest Vulnerability Index (TFVI) will use satellite data to assess the impact of growing threats such as land clearance and rising temperatures on forests.
- Backed by the National Geographic Society and Swiss watchmaker Rolex, TFVI aims to identify forests most at risk, to be prioritized for conservation efforts.
- Researchers combined 40 years of satellite measurements and forest observations covering tropical forests worldwide to come up with the standardized monitoring system.
- In recent years, multiple stressors have pushed forests to a tipping point, causing them to gradually lose their ecological functions, including their capacity to store carbon and recycle water, the study says.

Global restoration now has an online meeting point
- Restor is a map-based, open-source platform created so that people can better plan, manage and monitor restoration projects. The locations of more than 50,000 restoration and conservation initiatives are now registered on the platform.
- On the platform, Restor users can view high-resolution satellite imagery of places around the globe to learn about their potential for restoration or conservation. It also allows users to see what tree species are native to a particular location.
- Currently, Restor is collecting data from restoration projects around the world. Anyone with a project can apply for access to the site where they are able to enter data about their project and ecosystem.
- Restor CEO Clara Rowe says they hope to “enable and accelerate ecological restoration … around the globe by making it easy for anyone, anywhere to engage.”

Betting big on bioacoustics: Q&A with philanthropist Lisa Yang
- Lisa Yang is an investor and philanthropist who donated $24 million last month to establish the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
- Yang told Mongabay that she focused on bioacoustics due to the great potential for scaling the effectiveness of conservation efforts: “The technology can provide an effective way of assessing conservation practices.”
- Yang’s philanthropic interests extend to translational neuroscience and fostering opportunities and respect for people who’ve been historically marginalized by society, including the “neurodiverse and individuals with disabilities.”
- Yang spoke about opportunities to scale impact in conservation during a conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.

For monitoring mammals, eDNA boasts ‘killer feature’ over other methods
- Mounting evidence suggests that the fast-developing tool of eDNA could be a game-changer for terrestrial mammal monitoring.
- A new study demonstrates that eDNA analysis of stream water can reveal the diversity of terrestrial mammals in a large landscape as effectively as camera trapping and for a fraction of the cost.
- Traditional mammal survey methods can be time-consuming, expensive and far from failsafe; eDNA is a reliable and comparatively inexpensive way for conservationists to gain a snapshot of an ecosystem’s mammal fauna, scientists say.
- It could also have a big impact on conservation, since eDNA data allows timely decisions on which species to prioritize and which areas to protect.

Scientists turn to eDNA to curtail the freshwater extinction crisis
- Freshwater ecosystems are understudied and underfunded, resulting in a lack of information on what species are at risk of extinction.
- The eBioAtlas program, a partnership between the IUCN and NatureMetrics, uses environmental DNA gathered from freshwater samples to figure out what freshwater ecosystems to conserve and what species to prioritize.
- So far, a pilot study in southeast Liberia has successfully picked up environmental DNA from nearly 170 species, including some that are critically endangered.
- The new data will provide up-to-date information for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and empower local communities to maintain ownership of their land and water resources.

Armed with data and smartphones, Amazon communities boost fight against deforestation
- Equipping Indigenous communities in the Amazon with remote-monitoring technology can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found.
- Between 2018 and 2019, researchers implemented technology-based forest-monitoring programs in 36 communities within the Peruvian Amazon.
- Compared with other communities where the program wasn’t implemented, those under the program saw 52% and 21% less deforestation in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
- The gains were concentrated in communities at highest risk of deforestation due to threats like logging and illegal mining.

Sri Lanka seeks peace with pachyderms as human-elephant conflicts escalate
- Sri Lankan authorities have declared the establishment of a managed elephant reserve (MER) in the southern district of Hambantota in an effort to tackle the worsening problem of human-elephant conflicts (HEC).
- The MER was initially proposed in 2009, but not implemented since then, allowing human encroachment onto land that was supposed to have been preserved as elephant habitat.
- With the MER in force, human activity inside elephant habitat will be minimized, in a bid to reduce the rate of human-elephant conflicts.
- However, a leading conservationist warns the MER will only stop the conflicts from getting worse, but won’t reduce them, for which further containment measures will be needed.

The conservation gains we’ve made are still fragile, says Aileen Lee of the Moore Foundation
- When Aileen Lee took on the mantle of chief program officer at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, she brought substantial experience as a management consultant to a nonprofit that’s the largest private donor of Amazon conservation efforts.
- Like management consultants, she says, grant makers “will never be as close to the realities of the problems” as the groups they help, but can still help them “access resources, knowledge, and networks that might not otherwise be available to them.”
- Lee hails groundbreaking efforts in conservation and philanthropy, including the adoption of technology and greater engagement with a wider range of stakeholders, including Indigenous-led conservation groups.
- In an interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Lee discusses the Moore Foundation’s achievements in the Amazon, the impacts of recent setbacks to that work, and the role of young people in forging the future they want.

Cambodia’s first giant muntjac sighting highlights key mountain habitat
- Camera trap surveys in Virachey National Park in northeast Cambodia have recorded the country’s first sightings of a critically endangered deer, the large-antlered muntjac (Muntiacus vuquangensis).
- The surveys also recorded a suite of other increasingly rare species, including critically endangered Sunda pangolins and red-shanked douc langurs and endangered Asian elephants and dholes.
- Located in the Annamite mountain range, Virachey National Park is remote and rugged, which affords wildlife some protection from human encroachment.
- Poaching and logging have been hugely problematic in Virachey National Park in the past; experts say stronger protection is needed to safeguard its unique and diverse wildlife.

Camera trap pics of rare species in Vietnam raise conservation hopes
- Camera traps recently captured images of several different highly endangered species in Vietnam’s Phong Dien Nature Reserve.
- These include the Annamite striped rabbit (Nesolagus timminsi) and Owston’s palm civet (Chrotogale owstoni), which are only found in the Annamite Range of Laos and Vietnam.
- The sightings have confirmed the high biodiversity value of Phong Dien, and the importance of strengthening protection from threats such as snare hunting and hydropower development.

$10 million XPRIZE Rainforest contest announces 33 qualifying teams
- Thirty-three teams spanning 16 countries from Brazil to India have qualified for the next stage of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition, the organizers announced on World Rainforest Day.
- The $10 million contest, which launched in 2019 and concludes in 2024, aims to develop scalable and affordable technologies for rainforest preservation.
- Over the next three years, competing teams will leverage existing and emerging technologies including robotics, remote sensing, data analysis and artificial intelligence to develop new biodiversity survey tools and produce real-time insights on rainforest health and value.

Podcast: It’s an ‘incredibly exciting’ time for the field of bioacoustics
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we look at why it’s such an “incredibly exciting” time to be involved in the field of conservation bioacoustics — and we listen to some new and favorite wildlife recordings, too.
- Our guest is Laurel Symes, assistant director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. Symes tells us about how a new $24 million endowment will allow the center to expand its support for bioacoustics research and technology around the world and why this field is poised to make a huge impact on conservation.
- After our conversation with her, we listen to some of the most interesting bioacoustics recordings we’ve featured on the Mongabay Newscast, including the sounds of elephants, lemurs, gibbons, right whales, humpback whales, and frogs.

Big bioacoustics boost: Cornell University program receives $24 million donation
- The field of bioacoustics has been a game changer when it comes to monitoring and discovering new things about animals and ecosystems, both on land and at sea.
- Still a relatively new discipline, one of the leading programs in the field globally was founded in the 1980s at Cornell University, which has just announced a donation of $24 million to support its bioacoustics work.
- The K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics will use the funds to accelerate its training of researchers, facilitate development of new tools and partnerships, and build a global network of people who can share bioacoustics best practices.

Chocolate giant funds high resolution carbon map to protect forests
- A new carbon map based on high resolution satellite imagery that will help companies avoid deforestation in their supplies chains is expected to be published by the end of 2021.
- The map builds on the High Carbon Stock (HCS) approach, a methodology that differentiates between six categories of vegetation cover, from native forest areas that conservationists say should be protected to degraded lands low in carbon and biodiversity that may be appropriate for conversion to other uses.
- The map was developed by the EcoVision Lab at ETH Zurich and financed by Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest chocolate maker.
- The initial release of the map covers Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia.

Exposing organized crime in the Amazon: Q&A with Robert Muggah of the Igarapé Institute
- Relentless deforestation has pushed the Amazon to the brink of an ecological shift from rainforest to savannah with potentially devastating consequences for climate change and biodiversity.
- Home to most of the world’s tropical forest land, almost all logging in the Amazon is thought to be illegal, yet few penalties are imposed on offenders.
- To address the culture of impunity, a new data visualization platform, Ecocrime, has been developed by the Igarapé Institute, which seeks to expose the organized criminal networks that sustain illicit trade in the Amazon.

A new app puts invisible communities in Brazil’s Cerrado on the map
- Thousands of Indigenous, quilombola, and traditional communities live in the Cerrado, the world’s most biodiverse tropical savanna. But many lack access to official titles and deeds, and are not registered on official maps.
- As the agricultural frontier pushes into the northern part of the savanna, land-grabbing and violent attacks are increasing. Many of these communities risk losing their land and their resources upon which they depend.
- Now, a new smartphone app developed in collaboration with communities in the northern Cerrado and two Brazilian NGOs allows communities themselves to register their lands on the app, as well as important local sites and conflicts with farmers and land-grabbers.
- The developers of the app aim to halt the rapid and unequal development that threatens the lives and livelihoods of those working to protect the savanna, and ultimately help conserve the last remaining tracts of native Cerrado.

We can now see through clouds to detect deforestation in near real-time
- World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch can now track deforestation shortly after it occurs despite being obscured by cloud cover. The functionality will greatly improve efforts to monitor tropical deforestation and degradation.
- Radar for Detecting Deforestation (RADD) alerts use radar data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites, which cover the tropics every 6 to 12 days.
- The long wavelength radio waves can also penetrate smoke and haze, providing insight on forest loss that is occurring in areas that are otherwise shrouded.
- Radar additionally provides a more detailed picture on forest disturbance than Landsat imagery, enabling detection at an earlier stage.

An economic case for competing in the XPRIZE Rainforest contest (commentary)
- In 2019, XPRIZE Rainforest opened its doors and challenged the world to develop new biodiversity assessment technologies by offering a $10 million prize for the best one.
- In this commentary, Jonah Wittkamper, President of the Global Governance Philanthropy Network and co-founder of NEXUS, makes an economic argument for participating in the contest.
- Wittkamper says a great deal of value could be unlocked with the ability to rapidly assess rainforest biodiversity.
- This post is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

Fake it till you save it? Synthetic animal parts pose a conservation conundrum
- Thanks to technological advancements, it’s now possible to make synthetic versions of animal parts like rhino horn, elephant ivory, and big cat fur, demand for which is contributing to the extinction crisis.
- Yet this practice is controversial, as some conservation groups assert that selling synthetic parts could actually promote more poaching.
- Proponents of the strategy say more conversations are needed around this possibility, including looking at the issue from an economic perspective.

Canadian First Nation deploys ROV in push for stronger marine protection
- The Songhees Nation, a First Nations people of British Columbia, Canada, completed the first marine survey of culturally important species around the Tl’ches archipelago using a small underwater drone.
- By establishing a baseline for these animals, the Songhees Nation has taken the first steps toward establishing stronger protections for the culturally and ecologically rich site.
- Their work also demonstrated that the drone, a relatively low-cost commercial product, offered a reasonable alternative to more expensive survey methods, such as scuba diving.
- The survey has also been hailed as emblematic of an overdue but growing trend: scientists and conservationists using Indigenous knowledge alongside Western thinking.

An eye in the sky on deforestation: Q&A with Jean Jardeleza and Kim Carlson
- With fires and deforestation driving land use change around the world, Mongabay held a three-way Q&A with Kim Carlson of New York University and Jean Jardeleza of Ateneo de Manila University on the technology of studying land use change.
- Carlson’s research focuses primarily on how the palm oil industry drives deforestation in Indonesia, and how nongovernmental commitments can help reduce their impact.
- Jardeleza’s recent research focused on finding models that can accurately model deforestation in the Philippines, and is using them to evaluate the impact of the country’s National Greening Program.

Top positive environmental stories from 2020
- 2020 was a difficult year for many, but positive stories emerged.
- This year, species were brought back from the edge of extinction; interest in renewable energy surged; environmental monitoring technology improved; new protected areas were created; and a few Indigenous women leaders got some long-overdue credit and recognition.
- In no particular order, we look back at some of our top positive environmental stories from 2020.

Bold sustainability commitments: An interview with Microsoft’s Lucas Joppa
- One of the boldest climate commitments in 2020 came from the tech giant Microsoft, which in January pledged to be carbon negative by 2030 and to address its legacy emissions–all the carbon the company has emitted since its founding in 1975–by 2050.
- Microsoft has also committed to replenish more water than it consumes and produce zero net waste by 2030, while protecting more land than it uses by 2025. Further, the company said it would lend its computing power toward efforts to combat biodiversity loss and use its voice to advocate for public policies that “measure and manage ecosystems.”
- Heading up these ambitious sustainability initiatives is Microsoft’s chief environmental officer Lucas Joppa, a Ph.D. ecologist who also conceived of Microsoft’s AI for Earth platform.
- Joppa spoke with Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler in a December 2020 interview.

Clean up efforts won’t solve the plastic pollution crisis in the world’s seas
- A model simulating a device touted to clear plastic from the “Great Pacific garbage patch” shows that it would collect much less than 1 percent of the ocean’s plastic pollution by 2150.
- The study was the first to quantify the device’s ability to remove marine debris.
- A more comprehensive approach to reducing plastic, including holding corporations responsible, is needed in addition to efforts to scoop trash from the sea.

The Amazon’s short-eared dog was thought to be a scavenger. Now there’s video
- After installing a camera trap near a dead armadillo, a biologist unexpectedly recorded video of the elusive short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis) scavenging on the carcass, and subsequently published a field report about the incident.
- While there was previous anecdotal evidence that short-eared dogs scavenge, this field report provides the first published documentation of this behavior, according to its author.
- In general, very little is known about the short-eared dog, including information about the species’ biology and ecology, although researchers are working to fill these gaps.

Whale zone ahead: A cetacean speed trap tags ships going over the limit
- North Atlantic right whales, a critically endangered species with fewer than 366 remaining individuals, face two main threats: fishing gear entanglements and ship strikes.
- Many ships do not obey voluntary or mandatory speed restrictions in areas where North Atlantic right whales are present, raising the risk of fatal collisions.
- A new tool called Ship Speed Watch provides information on vessels that are not obeying speed restrictions.
- Conservationists say they hope it will help build awareness and strengthen regulations surrounding ship speeds.

Where to patrol next: ‘Netflix’ of ranger AI serves up poaching predictions
- The PAWS AI system, developed out of Harvard University, uses data about past poaching and game theory to predict where rangers are most likely to find poaching activity next.
- PAWS has been field tested in Cambodia and Uganda, and will soon roll out worldwide, available with the next update of a global data tool called SMART.
- Subsequent versions of the system will also feature a tool that recommends the best route for rangers to travel in their patrols.

Esri co-founder Jack Dangermond: ‘People and planet are inextricably linked’
- The digital mapping platforms developed by Esri, including ArcGIS, have revolutionized conservation and environmental planning, management and policymaking.
- Esri co-founder Jack Dangermond calls geographic information systems (GIS) “a sort of intelligent nervous system for our planet at a time when humanity desperately needs one to address the environmental and humanitarian crises at hand.”
- He credits Esri’s success to a sustainable trajectory of heavy investment in R&D, not being beholden to outside investors, and providing discounted and free use of its software to environmental nonprofits.
- In this interview with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler, Dangermond says that technology, amid the current fractured political climate, should be employed to encourage understanding rather than dwell on divisions.

Philanthropist Wendy Schmidt: ‘Solutions are always local’
- Coming from respective backgrounds of design and technology, Wendy Schmidt and her husband, Eric, are the driving force behind some of the charitable organizations and investment vehicles working to address the challenges of climate change, clean energy, ocean health, and more.
- Wendy Schmidt says they bring a systems-thinking approach to these challenges, to allow stakeholders to see connections that may not be obvious on the surface and work toward more resilient solutions.
- “Humans need to develop new systems that work in harmony with the natural world, that are resilient in the face of a changing planet,” she says.
- In this interview with Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler, Schmidt advocates for the role of technology, but also explains why the idea that technology can be “scaled” to meet any challenge is problematic.

The turtle egg that pinged back: Tracing a poaching pathway in Costa Rica
- A team of scientists has created 3D printed decoy sea turtle eggs, fitted with GPS trackers to follow the path of eggs stolen by poachers.
- In a recent study on the first trial run of these eggs, the team confirmed that most poached sea turtle eggs are traded locally.
- However, they also identified a much longer track — 137 kilometers, or 85 miles — that illuminated the pathway of what appears to be a much more organized trade system.
- Mongabay followed the hour-by-hour track of this egg to understand why sea turtle poaching still happens, and to learn what experts think can be done to stop it.

The rhino in the room: 3D scan brings near-extinct Sumatran species to virtual life
- Technologist Corey Jaskolski created the world’s first 3D digital copy of a Sumatran rhino to help educate the world about the critically endangered species.
- There are only about 80 Sumatran rhinos remaining in Indonesia, and the biggest threat to the species is being so isolated that they can’t find others to mate with.
- Jaskolski’s 3D scanning and AI technology can also be used for other purposes in conservation, such as species identification and anti-poaching efforts.

Madagascar experiments with drones for its massive reforestation effort
- Madagascar plans to acquire drones to help with its massive official reforestation campaign.
- The country aims to plant 60 million trees per year in an attempt to reconstruct its green architecture and restore ecological balance.
- It has already experimented with drones to help relief efforts during natural disasters and to deliver medical supplies in remote regions.

The social network of coral reef fish: Q&A with ecologist Mike Gil
- Mike Gil, an ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, deployed video cameras to “spy” on coral reef fish over months and found that they have surprisingly strong social networks.
- This research uncovered that reef fish pay close attention to when others leave the safety of the reef to eat in open water, and when they flee from predators.
- Fish were more likely to stay out in dangerous feeding areas when other fish were nearby, essentially finding safety in numbers the same way humans do.
- Computer models showed that this social network makes reefs much more sensitive to overfishing, and that if fishing is scaled up slowly, reefs can adjust and survive.

With the help of an app, Nunavut hunters document the changing Arctic
- Since 2012, the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board (NWMB) has run a community-based monitoring program to gather information about Inuit harvesting practices and the status of regional species.
- The program recently introduced an app that makes it possible for anyone to participate in the program, at any time.
- Like other community-based monitoring programs, the primary challenge for the NWMB is figuring out how to use information that is different from traditional scientific or social science research.

Brazilian frog believed ‘extinct’ for 50+ years, found with eDNA testing
- A Brazilian frog species, Megaelosia bocainensis, thought to have gone extinct in 1968 has been found with eDNA testing, which picks up the traces of environmental DNA that are left behind by living organisms in soil, water and air.
- The missing frog’s eDNA was detected in the Atlantic Forest biome in Parque Nacional da Serra da Bocaina, its last known habitat in São Paulo state, Brazil.
- The researchers used metabarcoding — a form of rapid DNA sequencing — in order to monitor entire communities, rather than only specific rare target species.
- The innovative highly sensitive eDNA sampling technique provides a valuable tool for conservation scientists to evaluate the status of threatened species and to confirm the presence of species that are difficult to monitor and often go undetected using traditional methods.

New artificial intelligence could save both elephant and human lives
- RESOLVE recently debuted the WildEyes AI system, a tiny camera imbued with artificial intelligence that can be trained to recognize specific animals in the field.
- The first version of WildEyes is trained to recognize elephants, which often come into conflict with humans when they raid crops and enter villages.
- RESOLVE says WildEyes can sound an early alarm to help prepare villagers to repel elephants.
- In the future, it may also be used to notify biologists of rare or invasive species, stop poachers, or prevent illegal logging.

The view from above: How do we know what’s really burning in the Amazon?
- As of September 10, 2020 more than a thousand major blazes had occurred in the Amazon this year — making it one of the worst fire years ever.
- The COVID-19 pandemic means there are fewer observers, including media organizations, on the ground this year to report fires to the world, leaving the bulk of the job to satellite fire detection systems.
- This Mongabay exclusive story offers an overview of some of the top organizations doing satellite fire monitoring in Amazonia, as well as explaining the types of detection systems getting the job done — read on and you’ll learn the vital differences between “aerosol emissions” and “hot spot detection,” and much more.
- But no matter how good these observational systems become — even as they inform the world of what’s happening in the Amazon — monitoring won’t be fully useful until the Brazilian government takes effective action and uses revolutionary “near real time” fire data to protect the greatest extant rainforest on Earth.

Philippine wildlife reporting app promises to upgrade fight against trafficking
- The Philippines’ environment department plans a year-end rollout of an app, currently being tested, that should make it easier for citizens and enforcement officials to report wildlife crimes.
- Illegal wildlife trafficking is the fourth-biggest transnational crime in the world, following the trafficking of drugs, people, and weapons; in the Philippines, the trade is estimated at $1 billion a year, and threatens the country’s unique wildlife, of which many species are found nowhere else.
- The WildALERT app is designed to overcome one of the main problems with reporting any kind of crime from remote areas — patchy internet reception — by using an offline mode that allows users to enter photographic and location data on-site and upload it when they get reception.
- The app also has a library feature, essentially a Facebook for endangered species, to allow users to quickly identify and report species they encounter; the lack of specialist knowledge is currently one of the big gaps in the existing campaign against the illegal wildlife trade.

Spying on fear in the wild: Q&A with ecologist Meredith Palmer
- Meredith Palmer uses camera traps to study the dynamics of predator-prey relationships in the wilds of Africa and North America.
- Her work is crucial to informing conservation management by ensuring that the reintroduction of predators contributes to a self-regulating ecosystem.
- Building largely on networks of camera traps that churn out hundreds of thousands of images, she must rely on citizen scientists who help her review them.
- Palmer also advocates for greater collaboration between the technology and conservation communities: “My cellphone does a billion things I wish my camera traps would do,” she states in this interview with Mongabay.

Sharks nearby? A bottle of seawater can hold the answer, study says
- A new study has been able to identify the presence of blacktip sharks in the waters of Terra Ceia Bay in Florida through eDNA detection in water samples.
- The water samples contained more blacktip eDNA in the spring and summer months, which is when the species uses the bay as a nursery, and less eDNA in the fall, which is when the sharks start to leave the area.
- While the current technique indicates if sharks are present in the water, it isn’t sensitive enough to provide an accurate population count.

Can we predict where Amazon fires will occur? And to what end?
- If it was possible to accurately forecast where Amazon fires were most likely to occur each year, it should theoretically be far easier to prevent and control those fires.
- Amazon fires are currently predicted in two ways: first, based on deforestation, much of it illegal, that occurs in the wet months before the annual fire season; it is these deforested areas that are most often set on fire in the dry months of July through September.
- Second, it’s also possible to predict the approximate severity and Amazon region in which fires may occur based on climate and drought forecasts for the biome, often based on ocean temperatures.
- But being able to predict where Amazon fires might occur is only a first step. A strong, proactive government response is also needed to prevent and control fires, and in order to apprehend and prosecute those who set them ablaze in the Amazon.

Facial recognition tech for chimps looks to bust online ape trafficking
- Much of the illegal trade in apes now takes place online, with traffickers posting pictures of baby animals for sale.
- ChimpFace, a newly developed software, uses an algorithm to determine if chimpanzee faces in images posted by traffickers match up with images later posted to social media accounts.
- Its creators hope the matches the program turns up will aid Interpol or local law enforcement in tracking and prosecuting people illegally buying and selling wildlife.

For the Amazon’s rarest wild dog, deforestation is a very real threat
- The short-eared dog, an elusive species endemic to the Amazon, could lose 30% of its habitat in just the next seven years.
- Researchers say the species should be listed as vulnerable, instead of near threatened, on the IUCN Red List to highlight the threats it faces from habitat loss and climate change.
- New research shows the short-eared dog may be a vital disperser of Brazil nut trees, helping prop up a $44 million industry.

What makes a Sumatran tiger different? Candid Animal Cam heads to Southeast Asia
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

Bubbles, lasers and robo-bees: The blossoming industry of artificial pollination
- Ninety percent of flowering plants require the help of animal pollinators to reproduce, including most of the food crops we eat.
- But massive declines in the populations of bees, the most efficient pollinators around, and the rising cost to farmers of renting them to pollinate their crops, has spurred the growth of the artificial pollination industry.
- The technologies being tested in this field include the delivery of pollen by drones and by laser-guided vehicles and even dispersal via soap bubbles.
- Proponents of artificial pollination say it can both fill the gap left by the declining number of natural pollinators and help in the conservation of these species; but others say there may not be a need for this technology if there was a greater focus on conservation.

Study: Chinese ‘dark fleets’ illegally defying sanctions by fishing in North Korean waters
- The study used a novel combination of satellite imagery to track more than 900 Chinese fishing vessels operating in North Korea in 2017, and an additional 700 in 2018.
- The vessels were harvesting Todarodes pacificus, also known as Pacific flying squid, a key staple food in the region.
- The U.N. Security Council passed sanctions on North Korea in late 2017, making any international fishing inside its borders a violation of international law.
- Unable to compete with the more technologically advanced Chinese vessels, local North Korean fishermen have been forced to make long, perilous journeys into Russian waters.

What is the yellow-throated marten? Candid Animal Cam investigates
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

Sounding the alarm about illegal logging? There’s an app for that
- Illegal timber accounts for 15% to 30% of the timber trade globally and is worth more than $100 billion. A significant share of this illegally harvested timber is sold in European markets.
- In the vast territories of both the Amazon and the Congo, the largest tropical rainforests in the world, authorities largely lack the capacity to monitor for illegal mining and logging activities.
- Using the customizable app ForestLink, people living within and around the forests can send alerts about illegal logging and mining activities to authorities and other stakeholders from remote areas without mobile connectivity or internet service.
- Community alerts have triggered more than 30 verification and enforcement missions by civil society organizations and local authorities in Cameroon, the DRC and Ghana in 2019 alone.

Baby humpback whales bulk up in Hawaii ahead of migration [VIDEO]
- New video reveals baby humpback whales nursing in Hawaii, a sight rarely seen by humans.
- A team of researchers used non-invasive suction cups to outfit seven baby humpback whales with special tags for recording data on nursing as well as other whale behaviors.
- During their time in Hawaii, the whale calves must drink enough milk to fatten up for a one to two-month migration back to Alaska.
- The researchers hope to understand the needs of mother whales and their calves during their time in the tropical breeding grounds and for their long migration.

Does Lucius Fox know? Tiny tech tracks bats (and more)
- A newly developed tracking device that fits like a tiny backpack allows scientists to monitor small animals.
- The wireless biologging network (WBN) device allows for proximity sensing, high-resolution tracking, and long-range remote data download all at the same time.
- The capability of the WBN device to track associations is providing scientists with new insights into animal behavior and conservation solutions.
- The device, weighing just 2 grams (0.07 ounces), is designed to be glued onto the back of animals like bats and eventually fall off after a few weeks.

Mug shots and public pics join the dots of whale sharks’ Southeast Asian trips
- A study blending old and new techniques has recorded young whale sharks returning to the same spot in the Philippines after visiting Malaysia and Indonesia.
- Scientists recorded the second-biggest aggregation of whale sharks in the Philippines in Honda Bay in the province of Palawan.
- Compared to other whale shark groups in the Philippines, the one in Honda Bay is made up mostly of juvenile males that feed on small fish and krill.
- The discovery underscores the need for stronger collaboration between the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, all part of the Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape Project under the Coral Triangle Initiative.

Spiny lobsters raise an undersea racket that can be heard miles away
- European spiny lobsters can create a sound that might, under the right conditions, be detectable up to 3 kilometers, nearly 2 miles, away.
- Researchers used underwater microphones to determine how loud lobsters are, and found that the larger the lobster, the louder the sound.
- Spiny lobsters were overharvested in the 1970s, and though populations have rebounded, there is still a need to monitor population levels.
- The study suggests that lobsters may be a candidate for acoustic monitoring.

Tech made to find galaxies sets its sights on wildfires
- Satellite technology used to hunt the night skies for exploding supernovae will be turning inwards to search for wildfires on earth.
- A geosynchronous satellite can compare large areas of land with previous images to detect minuscule changes in light that might signal a new fire, moments after its ignition.
- The full project utilizes multiple layers of technology to improve early detection, response, and monitoring of wildfires. Cameras, drones, air tankers, low earth orbit satellites, and geosynchronous satellites make up the entire system, called FUEGO.
- A wildfire detection company, Fireball International, is aiming to bring the FUEGO system to Australia as soon as possible to help reduce the chances of another destructive bushfire season.

‘Hummingbird’ spy creature films millions of monarchs taking flight
- An animatronic “hummingbird” equipped with a camera has been used to film a sea of monarch butterflies taking flight in their wintering grounds in Mexico.
- The “spy creature” technology is the latest by John Downer Productions, a pioneer in wildlife filming, and is featured in the PBS NATURE series “Spy in the Wild.”
- The series also makes use of other spy creatures to infiltrate groups of orangutans, meerkats, egrets, tortoises, sloths, cobras and hippos.

Through biomimicry, Brazil seeks tech innovations inspired by nature
- From spiderweb-inspired shampoo to a hotel whose architecture is based on the thermal properties of toucan beaks, scientists and companies in Brazil are betting on nature’s intelligence to create innovative solutions that reduce impacts on the planet.
- By valuing multifunctional design and being able to integrate materials that nature acknowledges in productive cycles, biomimicry reinforces the optimization of resources and aligns itself with the principles of a circular economy.
- Biomimicry began to be systematically implemented in the 1990s, initially to achieve energy efficiency; examples include buildings in Zimbabwe and Australia inspired by the circulation of air inside termite hills, the principle of whale fins applied to the generation of wind energy, and antiseptic walls that imitate shark skin.
- In Brazil, many immersion courses are now offered in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes that focus on innovative materials, and biomimicry consultants and startups are emerging in the market: In 2018, Nucleário became the first Brazilian company to win a prize from the Biomimicry Institute for its technology that protects trees in reforestation projects, based on the principles of winged seeds and bromeliads.

Low-cost satellite forest monitoring for all: Q&A with CLASlite creator Greg Asner
- Greg Asner started creating CLASlite during grad school in 1997, and by 2005 was using the satellite-image processing platform to monitor the entire Brazilian Amazon.
- The application automates the workflow for rendering satellite images into useful, information-rich maps to track logging, deforestation, and other forest disturbance events.
- Asner recently joined forces with Rajnish Khanna of i-Cultiver to create a low-cost, user-funded model to keep the CLASlite software running and accessible.
- In an interview, Anser tells Mongabay about the platform that he calls “the fastest and easiest way to take a look at any forest from Earth’s orbit.”

Camera traps in trees reveal a richness of species in Rwandan park
- Camera traps set high up in trees in Rwanda’s Nyungwe National Park captured 35 different mammal species over a 30-day period, including a rare Central African oyan (Poiana richardsonii), a small catlike mammal that has not previously been seen in the park.
- Arboreal camera traps are a viable method for conducting mammal surveys, especially when partnered with ground cameras.
- Understanding what animals are present in an area is a first step toward protecting them.

Answers in excrement: Fecal analysis yields insight about wild primates
- Wildlife researchers can obtain information from fecal samples on animals’ reproductive status, parentage, genetic relationships, and presence of parasites or viruses, such as Zika.
- Scientists studying wild primates in South America in the 1990s developed techniques to help them understand how hormones, steroids and other compounds related to the animals’ reproductive behaviors.
- More recently, scientists are testing whether fecal sampling can help identify parasites carrying diseases such as Zika virus or detect changes in the microbiome that could improve its contributions to host energy balances and nutrition and help them survive nutritionally stressful periods.
- Fecal sampling is a noninvasive method of capturing this information but getting and keeping the equipment and materials needed to process the samples is challenging.

Conservation biologist and wildtech journalist Sue Palminteri, 1965-2019
- Sue Palminteri — Mongabay’s wildtech editor, conservation biologist, professional tennis player, and long-time exercise enthusiast — lost her battle with cancer on November 30th. She was 54.
- Whether it was radio-collaring elephants across the savannas of South Africa, competing internationally alongside the Israeli national team in tennis, tracking saki monkeys through the rainforest in the sweltering mid-day heat of the Peruvian Amazon, or evaluating the practicalities of implementing technological solutions to conservation challenges, Sue fully embraced all she pursued with rare tenaciousness, passion, and grace.
- Her persistence and intelligence enabled her to excel as an athlete, a conservation biologist, and a journalist, while her authenticity, upbeat nature, and companionship made her a good colleague, friend, and partner.

Camera traps yield surprises in West Africa’s largest protected area
- The first camera study of wildlife in Burkina Faso and Niger has shown that the main human activities in the region’s largest protected area are gathering resources and grazing livestock.
- Poaching remains a threat, but it occurs less frequently than other human pressures on the region’s wildlife.
- The findings suggest possible changes in management strategies for three national parks in West Africa.

$10M in prize money for mapping rainforest biodiversity
- XPRIZE has established a $10 million prize to support the development of technology that enables rapid assessment of rainforest biodiversity.
- XPRIZE hopes the initiative will help address the perceived value gap between living and felled rainforest.
- Current efforts to survey rainforest biodiversity often employ a combination of technology — like camera traps, audio sensors, and remote sensing from drones to airplanes to satellites — and old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground surveys.
- But approaches have been limited by the challenge of hot and humid conditions, dense canopy cover, remoteness, and the sheer diversity of species of tropical rainforests.

LIDAR technology leads Brazilian team to 30 story tall Amazon tree
- A research team using cutting edge LIDAR technology is mapping the Brazilian Amazon to create a detailed biomass map in order to track the impacts of land use change on forest carbon emissions — data collection required under the Paris Climate Agreement and paid for by the Amazon Fund.
- While conducting their LIDAR survey by aircraft, the study team detected several groves of immense trees on the border between Pará and Amapá states. One individual, a red angelim (Dinizia excelsa Ducke) was recorded as being 88.5 meters (just over 290 feet) tall.
- A team of 30 researchers, guided by riverine community guides, made the arduous journey to the giant tree groves. They found some of the trees growing atop a hill, which is unusual because big tropical trees generally thrive in low places safe from wind. Further research is needed to learn why they grow there.
- The giant trees are more than a source of wonder: each can sequester up to 40 tons of carbon, nearly as much as a hectare (2.4 acres) of typical forest. So, when managing a forest and deciding which trees to cut, it is important to consider tree size. In this particular case, the loss of one giant red angelim’s carbon footprint would be huge.

The Ocean Cleanup successfully collects ocean plastic, aims to scale design
- The Ocean Cleanup announced that it has created a device that successfully captures plastic waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
- The device has undergone many design iterations, each stage facing criticism from oceanographers, environmentalists, and plastic pollution specialists for its feasibility, durability, safety, and allocation of funding.
- The group now plans to increase the size and quantity of their devices with the goal of one day ridding the ocean of most of its plastic debris.

How bioacoustics can transform conservation – Wildtech event in Palo Alto
- On October 17th Mongabay is holding a WildTech discussion panel on the potential for bioacoustic monitoring to transform conservation. The event is being hosted by the Patagonia store in Palo Alto, CA.
- Panel participants include University of Wisconsin ecologist Zuzana Burivalova, Conservation Metrics CEO Matthew McKown, and Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler.
- Doors open at 6:30 pm for snacks, beverages, and networking. The panel discussion begins at 7:15 pm.
- Admission is free but space is limited, so please RSVP.

New app tracks down forest fires in Bolivia
- A new app uses aerosol data and recent satellite images to find fires in the forests of Bolivia in real time.
- The application’s creators, from the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project, say the novel use of the aerosol data, originally intended to monitor air quality, represents a significant advance over traditional, temperature-related alerts.
- According to the NGO Friends of Nature Foundation, more than 41,000 square kilometers (15,800 square miles) of Bolivia has burned in 2019.

New detection devices could record microplastic pollution levels in real time
- Microplastic pollution is a threat to marine life and is found in the bodies of animals all along the food chain.
- Detecting microplastic pollution levels in the oceans is becoming increasingly important, in part so that sources can be found and vulnerable species protected if possible.
- Traditional testing via tow nets and lab analysis is slow and expensive, but a new generation of sensors is being developed to measure microplastics faster and at various depths.
- Mongabay spoke with Sheila Hemami, Director of Strategic Technical Opportunities for Massachusetts-based R&D laboratory Draper, which is developing new tools to record microplastic pollution levels in real time.

Protected areas best conserve mammalian diversity when connected with corridors, biologged weasels show
- For protected area (PA) networks to be an effective conservation tool, they should be well-connected to allow species movement through unprotected landscapes, but questions remain on what configuration of natural features can best facilitate animal movement.
- A recent study compared three theories of animal movement (structurally intact corridors, least-cost paths, and stepping stones) by analyzing the fine-scale movements of GPS-tagged fishers, a member of the weasel family. They found the tagged fishers consistently moved along structurally intact, natural corridors across a PA network.
- With the Aichi 2020 Biodiversity Targets in mind, the authors highlight that simply increasing the number of protected areas alone may not achieve the objectives of the protected area network amidst an increasingly fragmented landscape; the conservation of natural corridors between PAs may be equally important, something for future planners to consider.

‘No place to hide’ for illegal fishing fleets as surveillance satellites prepare for lift-off
- A low-cost satellite revolution is paving the way for real-time monitoring of fishing vessels using synthetic-aperture radar (SAR).
- SAR allows researchers to monitor ‘dark vessels’ that aren’t transmitting Automatic Identification Signals (AIS) location data.
- Disabling or manipulating AIS transmitters is a tactic commonly used by vessels engaged in illegal fishing activity.

Snow leopard population overestimated in Nepal? DNA study suggests it may be
- Researchers conducted a large-scale survey of potential snow leopard habitat in Nepal to re-estimate the species’ population density using the non-invasive technique of collecting environmental DNA from scat samples combined with standard genetic analyses.
- This method enabled the researchers to sample a larger, more representative, area than many previous studies, often conducted in prime leopard habitats; they also found that they could obtain reliable DNA from scat samples.
- Previous studies on which conservation policies have been based may have over-estimated the big cat’s population. The researchers say similar studies are needed to more accurately estimate the population of snow leopards in Nepal and 11 other range countries.

Satellite images from Planet reveal devastating Amazon fires in near real-time
- While many of the images currently being shared on social media and by news outlets are from past fires, satellites can provide a near real-time view of what’s unfolding in the Amazon.
- With near-daily overflights and high-resolution imagery, Planet’s constellation of satellites is providing a clear look at some of the fires now burning in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Beyond dramatic snapshots, those images also provide data that can be mined for critical insights on what’s happening in the Amazon on a basin-wide scale.

Precision conservation: High tech to the rescue in the Peruvian Amazon
- Peru’s Los Amigos Biological Station stands on a dividing line between the devastation caused by a gold rush centered on La Pampa, and a vast swath of conserved lands that includes Manú National Park — likely the most biologically important protected area in Latin America — plus its conserved buffers.
- Teaming up to defend these thriving forests and their biodiversity are conservationists and technologists — an innovative alliance that includes Conservación Amazónica (ACCA), Amazon Conservation (ACA), the Andes Amazon Fund, along with other organizations.
- Among the precision conservation tools they use to patrol against invading artisanal miners and illegal loggers are drones, acoustic monitoring, machine learning, lidar and thermal imaging — all applied to protecting one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth.
- Conservationists are hopeful not only that they’ll be able to protect Manú National Park and its buffers, but that they may be able to one day help remediate and restore the wrecked habitat of La Pampa. This integrative approach, they say, is vital to conserving the region’s biodiversity against the escalating climate crisis.

Tests show multi-rotor UAVs can improve cetacean behavioral studies
- Researchers assessing the utility of small, multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to survey and study humpback whales found that video data collected from a UAV improved upon data recorded by an expert observer from a research vessel, a standard technique.
- The observer mischaracterized certain behaviors, primarily socializing and nurturing, as other activities, such as traveling or resting, that the aerial viewpoint of the UAV captured clearly, even when the animals were below the surface.
- The whales did not show changes in behavior when the UAV approached or remained present at 30 meters above them.
- Their results suggest that small UAVs add value to cetacean behavioral research as a non-invasive research tool that can capture information that is otherwise difficult to detect from the angle and distance of a ship or shore observer.

Photo essay: Madagascar’s disappearing dry forests (insider)
- Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler writes about his visit to the dry forests of western Madagascar last month.
- The dry forest of western Madagascar is famous for its wildlife and baobab trees, including the tourist destinations of Baobab Alley, Tsingy de Bemaraha, and Kirindy Forest.
- Rhett traveled to Madagascar for the annual Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) meeting. Ahead of the conference, he used the opportunity to visit the Menabe region of western Madagascar to investigate some GPS points identified via Global Forest Watch’s GLAD alert system as potential recent deforestation.
- This post is insider content, which is available to paying subscribers.

New toolkit identifies multiple species from environmental DNA
- Researchers have developed a DNA analysis toolkit designed to speed the identification of the multiple species in a biological community by analyzing environmental DNA from a sample of water or soil.
- To confirm the presence of a species at a site, the tool compares its genetic barcode (short DNA sequence) to barcodes of known species in one of several reference databases.
- The toolkit’s advantage is its ability to quickly process many barcode sequences, at multiple analysis locations on the gene, that enable it to identify the species of the DNA sequences of many organisms at the same time.

Baby whale wears a camera, reveals its travel and nursing behavior: video
- A video taken by a camera carried by a baby whale shows underwater nursing behavior from the calf’s perspective.
- The CATS Cam camera used in the filming incorporates multiple environmental sensors, such as depth and temperature, as well as movement and acceleration by the calf.
- The unusual perspective may help researchers better understand the nursing process of a baby whale, including surfacing to breathe while its mother remains underwater and suckling from mammary slits on each side of its mom.

Conservation tech prize with invasive species focus announces finalists
- The Con X Tech Prize announced its second round will fund 20 finalists, selected from 150 applications, each with $3,500 to create their first prototypes of designs that use technology to address a conservation challenge.
- Seven of the 20 teams focused their designs on reducing impacts from invasive species, while the others addressed a range of conservation issues, from wildlife trafficking to acoustic monitoring to capturing freshwater plastic waste in locally-built bamboo traps.
- Conservation X Labs (CXL), which offers the prize, says the process provides winners with very early-stage funding, a rare commodity, and recognition of external approval, each of which has potential to motivate finalists and translate into further funding.
- Finalists can also compete for a grand prize of $20,000 and product support from CXL.

Let there be lights, to help migratory cranes avoid power lines
- A test of a new system deploying ultraviolet (UV) lights on power lines greatly reduced potentially deadly collisions with the lines by migrating sandhill cranes.
- Developers of the Avian Collision Avoidance System, or ACAS, randomly assigned the system to be on or off each night of a four-month testing period.
- Turning on the lighting system reduced crane collisions by 98 percent and enabled crane flocks to more quickly and calmly avoid the power lines while in flight.
- Many birds can detect UV light, though humans cannot, so the system has potential to reduce a major threat to a range of migratory species without affecting the visibility of structures to humans.

Film that fish: Stereo-video speeds surveys of marine fish communities
- Researchers use underwater visual surveys to assess the sizes of fish in marine communities and their associated habitats, but diver-based data collection is time-consuming and requires expertise, and results may vary among different data collectors.
- A multinational research team recently published the first guide to help researchers using diver-operated stereo-video methods (stereo-DOVs) to standardize surveys of fish assemblages (species and their abundances) and their associated habitat.
- The video provides a permanent, shareable record of each survey transect, including the species and numbers of fish seen, while the stereo option allows researchers to measure fish using overlapping images.
- The guide provides information on appropriate equipment; designing a stereo‐DOV if needed; operating it during underwater studies; processing the video data after collection; and analyzing fish behavior, population features and habitat in the resulting video.

New eDNA sampling system aims for cleaner, more efficient field research
- Researchers tested a new self-preserving filter housing system that automatically preserves eDNA from water samples, while reducing the risk of DNA contamination and plastic waste.
- Scientists who use eDNA currently rely on cumbersome cold storage or liquid preservatives and single-use sampling equipment to preserve their eDNA samples, which are highly sensitive to degradation as well as contamination.
- The new system incorporates a hydrophilic plastic material in its filter housing that physically pulls water from the sample without having to add chemicals.
- In a six-month test, it allowed data collectors to preserve samples quickly and easily, at ambient temperature and with far reduced plastic waste, preventing degradation for weeks and with slightly higher amounts of captured DNA than a standard method.

Sponges supply DNA for new method of monitoring aquatic biodiversity
- Tracking environmental DNA (eDNA) is fast becoming a popular method of monitoring aquatic biodiversity, but current methods are expensive and cumbersome.
- Filter-feeding sponges can act as natural sieves to collect and concentrate eDNA from seawater.
- Using sponge samples collected from the Antarctic and the Mediterranean Sea, researchers identified 31 organisms, including fish, penguins, and seals, clearly separated by location.
- Although the method is still a proof of concept, it may lead to the development of simpler, less expensive technologies for aquatic eDNA collection.

“Part of something bigger”: the social movement around New Zealand’s Predator-Free 2050 goal
- Trapping for invasive mammals that prey on New Zealand’s endemic, often flightless, native birds has been part of the country’s rural life for a long time.
- Through the national Predator-Free 2050 program, which aims to wipe out three particularly troublesome predators from the country by 2050, multiple projects are ramping up protective activities to rid areas of these predators and encourage people’s participation in enabling bird populations to recover.
- Apps and other technological developments have already made trapping easier and more efficient, allowed over 1,500 community trapping groups to record and share trap and bait station information with others, and record birdsong to monitor impacts of pest control efforts.
- Support for the Predator-Free 2050 goal isn’t universal, so involving indigenous Māori tribes, who now hunt the invasive predators instead of native birds, and other communities — through technologies and other means of engagement — will remain integral to the ambitious program’s success.

New tool helps monitor forest change within commodities supply chains
- With commercial agriculture driving some 40 percent of tropical deforestation, more than 300 major companies involved in the commodities trade have pledged to avoid deforestation in their supply chains.
- To help the companies and financial institutions adhere to these commitments, Global Forest Watch (GFW) has launched a new forest monitoring tool called GFW Pro.
- Using tree cover change information from GFW’s interactive maps, the new desktop application enables users to observe and monitor deforestation and fires within individual farms and supply sheds or across portfolios of properties and political jurisdictions.
- To encourage use by businesses, the new tool presents the information in graphs and charts to companies for easy and regular monitoring, as they might monitor daily changes in stock prices.

Predator-free by 2050? High-tech hopes for New Zealand’s big conservation dream
- To preserve New Zealand’s remaining native biodiversity, the country has begun an ambitious nationwide program to eliminate its most damaging non-native invasive predators — rats, stoats and possums — by 2050.
- To carry out this mammoth task, government and private entities across the country are applying new technologies to existing detection, exclusion, trapping, poisoning and other strategies used to reduce the numbers of harmful predators.
- The program has wide public support, though some effective technologies, particularly gene editing, are controversial; recognition of the importance of public support, as well as cost and effectiveness, help guide the program’s development.

Researchers and customs officials unite to fight wildlife trafficking using eDNA
- A novel, fast-acting eDNA test can help airport customs officials identify illegally trafficked European eels, which as juveniles cannot be visually distinguished from legally-traded species.
- Although international treaties have historically provided a framework for imposing restrictions when nations violate agreements, enforcement remains a challenge in part because many trafficked specimens go unnoticed.
- Where enforcement proves difficult, technology such as this fast-acting eDNA test can improve monitoring of illegally traded flora and fauna.

Tiny tracking tags help decode how echolocating bats navigate
- Although navigation in echolocating bats has been studied for a long time, questions remain on how bats differentiate among echoes from different objects.
- Researchers designed a small, lightweight tag that can capture movement and sound information in three dimensions to create a map of a bat’s sensory environment.
- The data helped researchers pinpoint the movements of bats during flight and while catching prey, as well as how echoes from various objects differ.
- One-third of bat species are threatened with extinction or lack basic ecological data, so such information can help scientists and wildlife managers understand bats’ foraging behavior and develop better measures for their conservation.

Underwater ultrasound scanner to support manta conservation
- Researchers used a new contactless ultrasound device to scan reef manta rays in the wild, enabling them to assess the animals’ maturity and reproductive status underwater.
- The successful scanning of a pregnant female manta produced clear images of her fetus.
- By helping researchers better understand the factors that influence the timing and location of mantas’ breeding, the researchers say, the ultrasound technology can help them determine reproductive rates and guide manta conservation strategies.

Earth’s hidden tree-microbe network mapped for the first time ever
- For the first time ever, researchers have mapped the underground network of microbes connecting forest trees around the world using an enormous data set of more than 1.1 million forest plots.
- Mapping the forest microbe network required global collaboration and high computing capabilities.
- The new maps confirm patterns that have been long suspected. For example, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi dominate forests in the warmer tropics while ectomycorrhizal fungi are more widespread in colder boreal and temperate forests.
- The predicted maps are, however, limited by the geographic coverage and sampling density of trees across the world. While the coverage is good in developed countries, it is relatively poor in developing countries like India, China and countries in the tropical region, the researchers say.

Models, maps, and citizen scientists working to save the Great Barrier Reef
- As global warming drives more events that impact coral reefs, managing the Great Barrier Reef’s resilience demands comprehensive and detailed mapping of the reef bed.
- Available surveys and maps with geographically referenced field data have been limited and fragmented.
- A diverse research team recently demonstrated a successful approach, applying statistics to image data to build predictive models, integrate diverse datasets on reef conditions, and provide a comprehensive map of the Reef that informs reef management decisions.

Hunting for rare plants in inaccessible spots: Q&A with drone pilot Ben Nyberg
- For decades, botanists at the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) in Hawaii have rappelled down dangerously steep cliff faces using ropes, hung out of helicopters and walked through some very remote valleys to look for, and conserve, rare, native plants. Several cliffs and valleys, however, have remained inaccessible.
- Drones are now helping the NTBG staff access and survey some of these difficult-to-reach parts of the Hawaiian islands.
- Mongabay recently spoke with Ben Nyberg, a GIS coordinator and drone specialist at NTBG, about the use of drones for plant conservation.

Counting on eDNA for a faster, easier way to count coral
- Environmental DNA, known as eDNA, is genetic material sloughed off by animals or plants and found in soil, air, or water, and allows scientists to collect and analyze genetic material without having to retrieve it from a species directly.
- Researchers in Hawaii found that the amount of eDNA in water samples is related to coral abundance and thus can be used to conduct accurate surveys of local coral populations using less time and money than sending SCUBA divers down to do the surveys.
- Coral reefs have the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem globally and are one of the most threatened, thanks to climate change and direct human impact. eDNA could help researchers evaluate coral abundance and health more quickly, easily and cost-effectively.

‘Landscape of fearlessness’: bushbuck emboldened following top-predator decline in Mozambique
- Bushbuck in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park have become increasingly fearless in their foraging habits, changing from foraging exclusively in woodland areas to braving open floodplains.
- Following years of civil war, populations of large herbivores and carnivores in Gorongosa declined by over 90 percent, with some top predators completely extirpated.
- Researchers from Princeton University conducted experiments using state-of-the-art equipment to establish whether the bushbucks’ use of floodplains for foraging was due to the decline in predation threat.
- Following experimentally simulated predation events, bushbuck significantly increased their use of tree cover, indicating that the reintroduction of top predators would restore a ‘landscape of fear’.

Changing energy use in rural Africa with power from solar, clean stoves…and women
- Widespread use of fuelwood and charcoal for cooking and heating is a notable barrier to achieving development and conservation goals in sub-Saharan Africa, yet previous attempts at introducing better fuel technologies have largely failed.
- To address energy use at the source, recent efforts are underway that seek to improve adoption of new technologies, such as solar-powered equipment or efficient cookstoves, in rural communities.
- Rather than impose a new method or technology onto a community, encouraging behavior change by wrapping the technology in a collaborative or entrepreneurial envelope could encourage longer-lasting change.

Drone rediscovers Hawaiian flower thought to be extinct
- A drone surveying a cliff face in a remote part of Kalalau Valley in Hawaii’s Kaua‘i Island has confirmed the presence of Hibiscadelphus woodii, a relative of hibiscus that was last seen alive in 2009, and thought to be extinct.
- Biologists first spotted four H. woodii plants in March 1991, but three of the plants were crushed and killed by falling boulders between 1995 and 1998. The remaining known individual was last observed alive in 2009, and then seen dead in 2011.
- However, by flying into difficult-to-reach areas, drones are uncovering secrets of previously unexplored cliff habitats.

Mobile app encourages Indian fishers to free entangled whale sharks
- When whale sharks in waters off the Indian state of Gujarat get trapped in fishing nets, a new mobile app lets fishers easily document their release.
- Conservationists and fishers alike hope the app will speed up the compensation fishers receive for damaged nets.
- However, fishers say the compensation, a maximum of 25,000 rupees ($360), should be increased to reflect the true loss of their revenue during their downtime without nets.

Creating a high-tech island to save one of the world’s rarest birds
- Scientists in New Zealand are combining tracking, genomics, and drone technologies to save the kākāpō, the giant flightless parrot nearly eradicated by invasive predators, such as dogs, rats, and cats brought by human settlers.
- Data loggers on a predator-free island read information emitted by transmitters worn by each of the birds and send the data to the research team; the information tells researchers where birds are nesting, when birds are sick, and when (and with whom) a given bird mated.
- The team supplements natural kākāpō breeding with artificial insemination, including flying a sperm-carrying drone that can swiftly move sperm from a male to an appropriate female across the island, which the researchers believe helps keep the sperm more viable when it reaches the female.
- For this, scientists “match” male and female kākāpō using genetic analysis to determine how closely related the two birds are and choose mates that are most distantly related. The research team is reviewing genomic data from all adult kākāpō for clues about fertility and disease.

‘Judas’ snakes lead scientists on a high-tech Easter egg hunt for pythons
- Scientists are exploring various technologies to address the spread of highly invasive Burmese pythons, which have devastated native mammal and bird populations across much of southern Florida.
- Researchers who recently captured a large pregnant Burmese python did so using the “Judas” technique: the radio-tagging of adult pythons that will approach others of the opposite sex during the breeding season, “betraying” them to the research teams.
- More recently, separate research teams have trialed the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) to determine the spatial distribution, range limits, and expansion rates of Burmese pythons in the region. They found python eDNA within a wildlife refuge, indicating that the invaded area extends further north than previously thought and that pythons are likely resident there.

Lift-off for thermal-imaging system to estimate wildlife populations
- A research team hailed a breakthrough in their imaging system’s ability to detect and identify orangutans in tropical rainforest.
- They now plan for computer algorithms to report back what a thermal camera has seen in real time.
- The researchers believe the system could also be used to spot poachers targeting rare species.

Solving the mystery of the UK’s vanishing hen harriers
- The numbers of breeding hen harriers, one of England’s rarest birds and a protected species, dropped sharply in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
- To better understand why hen harriers were vanishing, researchers tracked the movements of 58 birds using satellite-based tags in conjunction with remote sensing land management data.
- Birds with tags that stopped transmitting spent their last week of life predominantly on moors where hunters shoot grouse and were 10 times more likely to disappear or die when grouse moors dominated their ranges, suggesting they were killed.
- The findings indicated that 72 percent of the tagged harriers were either confirmed or considered very likely to have been illegally killed.

Virtual Reality 360-degree video: An “empathy-generating machine” for conservation outreach?
- New video technology that films in 360 degrees brings viewers into the middle of the action and is set to become a powerful outreach tool to build understanding and empathy for wildlife and wild places.
- Small off-the-shelf cameras rugged enough to film in the wild are relatively inexpensive, easy enough for field researchers and other filming novices to use, and sufficiently sophisticated to collect videos of resolutions higher than 5 megapixels.
- At a recent presentation at National Geographic, four VR-360 filmmakers strongly endorsed the technology as a tool to inspire and nurture empathy in viewers for a range of conservation issues.

Those kicks were fast as lightning: Kangaroo rats evade deadly snake strikes
- A research team has shown that desert kangaroo rats fend off predatory rattlesnakes through a combination of speedy reaction times, powerful near-vertical leaps, and mid-air, ninja-style kicks.
- Locating snakes through radio tracking and filming snake-kangaroo rat interactions with high-speed video cameras enabled the team to analyze strike and reaction speed, distance and angle the rats moved to avoid being bitten, and aspects of the impressive maneuverability displayed by most kangaroo rats in the recordings.
- About 81 percent of recorded snake strikes were accurate, yet the snake actually bit the kangaroo rat in just 47 percent of the strikes and latched on long enough in just 22 percent of strikes to actually kill and eat the kangaroo rat.
- The slowed-down videos demonstrate the importance of kangaroo rats’ physical features, including long tails and powerful legs, and mid-air maneuverability in escaping predation.

Virtual reality tool gives viewers the vision of a nocturnal primate
- Researchers teamed up with a student-based tech lab to develop an interactive virtual reality tool that gives users entry into the vision of another species–a tiny nocturnal primate with huge eyes that must catch prey in the dark.
- Tarsier Goggles can simulate human and tarsier vision under varying ambient lighting conditions.
- By simulating the tarsier’s superior night vision relative to humans, the interactive educational tool integrates anatomy with natural selection, an important connection, given how visual properties affect the ways animals forage.
- Participating students expressed a preference for the interactive learning features – “Instead of hearing what life is like, you [can] actually experience it.”

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