AI in Wildlife ConservationAI in wildlife conservation has become quite valuable these days with its image recognition technology.

AI has demonstrated its versatility in recent years, stepping out of the research labs and business world and into the arena of social good. Image recognition technology, in particular, has come to play a valuable role in wildlife conservation, AI in wildlife conservation where endangered species are tallied and tracked so their numbers and migrations can be more accurately measured and understood.

Wildlife conservation has recently changed with the application of artificial intelligence. AI  in wildlife conservation helps researchers identify animal locations, sightings, movement patterns, and even social groups of animals. AI is used by conservationists to monitor and protect animals in their natural habitat. 

This article describes the benefits of AI in wildlife conservation and some use cases. 

Why are conservationists using AI in wildlife conservation? There are an estimated 30,000 endangered species worldwide. Scientists understand what threatens these species by using AI to provide information about where these species were born, how many survived, where they go and how far they go. Below are some of the benefits of AI in protecting animal species. 

• With AI for wildlife, you can easily collect and quickly analyze huge and engaging datasets. 

• AI helps wildlife researchers study wildlife species together and develop strategies to protect them. 

• Artificial intelligence tracks wildlife patterns and predicts the extinction of endangered species. 

• It helps conservationists to detect and stop wildlife poaching. 

• It can provide information about the effects of climate change on wildlife and reduce its impact by designing a proper plan. 

• AI assists in assessing the species population and seeing changes. 

• It helps to stop the illegal animal trade on social media. 

• Artificial intelligence identifies and classifies animal species into various classes and provides detailed information about them. 

• AI algorithms can conserve animal habitats by predicting animal migratory patterns.  

AI in wildlife conservation Projects and UseCases 

• World Wildlife Fund and Intel are working in collaboration with researchers on a project to monitor and protect Siberian tigers in China by leveraging artificial intelligence. AI can help analyze a huge amount of data collected using advanced camera traps. 

• DeepMind, a UK-based company, has developed an AIbased model to identify animal species and count their numbers. It has been deployed in Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Scientists recognize wild animals using AI and try to conserve at-risk species before it`s too late. 

• Rainforest Connection, a San Francisco-based NGO is utilizing artificial intelligence to combat wildlife poaching in Africa. 

• Microsoft`s Species Classification API Demo uses a machine learning model to identify over 5000 animal and plant species.

• Elephant Listening Project: Cornell University researcher Peter Wrege and his team used neural networks, a subset of artificial intelligence, to collect and categorize data on Savanna elephants surviving in dense rainforests of Central Africa. They place audio recorders in the forest to monitor jungle sounds. They built different neural networks with Conservation Metrics, a California-based company, to separate jungle noises and locate elephants and poachers. 

• Saving the global bee`s colony: Katharina Schmidt, founder at apic.ai, and her team designed a beehive monitor to assemble data using TensorFlow which is Google`s open-source machine learning framework. It is supported in tracking various bees activities, such as bees count, their movement patterns, or if they are carrying pollen. AI helps experts in making informed decisions by providing complete data and analysis reports. 

• Conservation Metrics, a Santa Cruz-based company, utilizes AI tools and machine learning models to help researchers in monitoring wildlife conditions, distribution, and population trends.

• Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security (PAWS): PAWS is an AI-based application used for predictive analytics and resource optimization. Assist rangers by analyzing data and providing information on terrain, wildlife, nature trails, and walking traffic. The AI ​​tells the system to find the best route for the park ranger to patrol and counts the number of snares and traps in the path. Artificial intelligence helps rangers discover wildlife crime. 

• Wildlife Insights is a cloud-based AI-enabled platform that enables many companies to upload, store, manage, and share data and derive meaningful insights from that data. Takes data out of the field and uploads it to the Google cloud, significantly speeding up the process of opening analytics and mappings.

• Wildbook, a non-profit organization based in the United States, uses AI algorithms to digitally tag individual animals like human fingerprints. The algorithm analyzes a public stream of photos and videos to identify individual animals on the fly. 

Conclusion: 

Artificial intelligence illuminates ways to protect animal species by providing excellent data on what is happening to wildlife. AI in wildlife conservation provides a comprehensive view of the Earth's biodiversity and helps shape conservation policies.