5. Conservation technology: how are new advancements helping save biodiversity?

Episode produced by Abiraam Selvakumar, Kirsten Scott, and Tyler Dender

This episode explores new technologies available to conservation scientists for monitoring and protecting wildlife and their habitats. In the rapidly changing tech world, it can be hard to follow what’s possible, so each of our speakers focuses on recent peer-reviewed research on a conservation technology of interest. Abiraam talks about camera traps, and their importance in understanding animal behaviour, detecting rare species movement patterns and population numbers, along with their significance in the fight against poaching. Tyler discusses the benefits of using drones to monitor wildlife remotely including tracking animal behaviours, identifying cryptic or dangerous species, and the surveillance of illegal activities in remote locations. Kirsten considers a novel artificial intelligence (AI) program, CAPTAIN, that outperforms current planning models to optimize conservation efforts. It uses reinforcement learning to train models for conservation prioritization by best utilizing the available data and resources, resulting in effective area selection for conservation policies. What’s also interesting about these new, powerful tools is they can be used in community science or can use community-collected data, another influential ‘tool’ with considerable potential to assist in biodiversity conservation.