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Dear <<First Name>>
Welcome to the first WILDLABS Community Digest of 2019. Traditionally, January tends to be a quieter month for the community... not this year! More than 120 new posts in the community since our last digest means there is a whole lot to get to in this issue, so we're going to keep this hello brief.
Below, you'll be able to browse through the highlighted conversations in groups that are relevant to your work. In between these digests, you can also see the latest conversations from across the community in the Explore tab of your Dashboard. A little reminder - the WILDLABS community is much easier to navigate if you've logged in and accessed your dashboard! Once you've joined a group in the community, it will appear in the My Groups tab. This list is ordered based on activity, which means the groups with the most recent posts float to the top of your list.
In this digest, you'll also find live #tech4wildlife funding opportunities and career opportunities (13 in this issue!), discover our newest members, and browse the latest in-depth articles from our resources area. If you have written up your work in a case study or blog post and you think it would be of value to others in our community, consider yourself with a standing invitation to submit it to our editorial team for consideration to be added to our resources area. Just email community@wildlabs.net to share your work.
See you in the community,
The WILDLABS Team
(Header Image: HWC Tech Challenge winners Arribada trailing their thermal cameras in Greenland. Read more about this work here. Credit: Anne Dangerfield)
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Visit the My Groups tab of your dashboard to discover the latest discussions in your areas of interest. Groups with the most recent comments will float to the top of your list.
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- How to build VHF tags from scratch? Simon Ripperger has asked for advice about building VHF tags from scratch. Application is for tracking bats, so they need to be <1g. Rob Appleby and Harold Tay have joined to offer instructions, and Simon is now looking into building the tags in the shared instructions. But he's also interested in less sophisticated tags, as they'd be fun to build with students. (6 replies)
- Drone based orangutan tracking - are you working on something similar? Dirk Gorissen has shared an in depth write-up about a tracking project he's been doing on the side over the past two years, working to track Orangutans with drones and Gnu-Radio. If you're working on something similar, he's curious to hear from you. (3 replies)
- New study on data loggers and movement ecology. Euan Ritchie shares his recently published work integrating GPS trackers and accelerometers to examine the movement ecology of possums in fragmented landscapes. Questions or comments? (Be the first to reply)
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- Notification systems for trap activation? Andrew Carter is looking for a trap alarm device that sends notifications via SMS or email when traps are activated. It would need to function in remote field sites and over large areas. Any recommendations? (Be the first to reply)
- Progress on the open-source water intermittency data logger: After getting loads of advice, Erick Lundgren has made progress on creating a simple, cheap data logger that can record the presence/absence of water for stream intermittency surveys. If you're interested in this kind of sensor for your own research or have ideas about further development, let him know. (14 replies)
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- Tech for rewildling conflicts: Vance Russell, Joshua Siva, Rob Appleby and Joachim Neff are having a productive exchange of ideas about tech for mitigating rewildlife conflict, with the discussion honing in on "Scary Man" inflatable effigies. (19 replies)
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Using Citizen Scientists to analyse HWC Interventions? Femke Hilderink has shared 'Bring the Elephant Home', which involves citizen scientists their project on beehive fencing. She's interested to hear your experiences working with citizen scientists. Has it worked? How to you handle potential issues with data quality or retention of volunteers? (Be the first to reply)
- Advice on monitoring and maintenance of electric/solar fencing? Sangay reports that the use of locally fabricated electric/solar fencing is spreading widely in Bhutan as a tool to mitigate HWC. He is looking for ways to improve the monitoring and maintenance of these fences - if you have experience in this realm, let him know. (2 replies)
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Foxlights work on pumas, but not foxes? Femke Hilderink and Nilanga Jayasinghe have shared an article on the use of Foxlights to reduce livestock depredation by pumas in Northern Chile. Interestingly, it seems that Andean foxes in the area are unfazed by the moving lights. Rob Appleby suggests it may have to do with responses to local persecution. Any thoughts or relevant experience to share on foxes and their response to visual deterrents? (1 reply)
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- eDNA Future Applications: Yvan Satgé and Harold Tay have evolved this thread into a further reading repository for papers and information about future applications of eDNA. Are you interested in this tool? Join the discussion to share your resources or experiences. (4 replies)
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- Sumatran Forest Type Maps and Data: Tom Swinfield has answered Courtney Dunn's ask for suggestions about good databases or sites to find forest cover maps for Indonesia. She's after maps that show forest type for a particular park in Sumatra - Kerinci Seblat National Park. Can you add any other suggestions that Courtney could look into? (1 reply)
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Advice requested: Wild pig crop damage assessment and movement using GIS and drones: Sangay is working for crop protection from wildlife in Bhutan and has asked for advice about how drones, GIS and tracking tags could be used to assess crop damages caused by wild pigs and track the movements of pigs. If you have experience in this space, he'd appreciate your advice. (3 replies)
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- Researching most affordable GPS chips with sensor capability: Malou Anderson-Ramiez is trying to find the most affordable GPS chip on the market now, capable of also having a sensor chip that senses and measures body temp and/or heart rate of large mammals. She's had some fantastic, detailed advice from dgilbert, Mario Briceño, and Joachim Neff, and is going to report back when she's made progress (5 replies)
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Call for Ideas and Feedback: What are you most pressing challenges? Stuart has written to ask this group what are the most pressing challenges they have that could potentially be solved by technology. He is a technologist, but also has experience investigating cyber crime and developing intelligence for law enforcement. He's keen to put his skills to use and help with conservation if he can. If you have challenges that could use his skills, join the discussion (Be the first to reply)
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Seeking beta testers for our new wildlife intelligence platform: If you joined our sensors virtual meetup, you'll be familiar with Jan Kees Schakel and the Sensing Clues project. He's now announced that after 4 years of development and numerous field tests in Kenya, Nepal and the Netherlands, the Beta-version of the Platform for Wildlife Intelligence is scheduled for launching in February 2019. If you work with a wildlife protection organisation, you're invited to test the beta platform. See the post for more info. (Learn more)
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- If you could design and build a security enclosure for a camera trap, what would you do? Sam Seccombe is interested to hear any and all thoughts on security enclosure specifications people might have, mods people have made for their existing enclosures and pros and cons that you might have found about specific types when using them in the past. Euan Ritchie, Vikram Aditya and Rob Appleby have offered their feedback - do you agree with what's been shared? (3 replies)
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- Conserving the Sumatran and Javan Rhino with Machine Learning: Claire Oelrichs has shared an upcoming project from Save Indonesian Endangered Species. They will be building a machine to identify individual Indonesian rhino. This will be challenging due to low data numbers.... Sumatran rhino 80, Javan rhino 70, so they will be piggy backing off a larger machine trained in object identification on millions of images. They will be loading images over the coming 3 years and may need to use citizen science such as wildme.org to assist with labeling. Join the discussion to ask Claire more about the project. (1 reply)
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- Open Source Project - Machine learning to detect fish bomb blasts: Jamie Macaulay has a project trying to detect illegal fish bomb blasts in Tanzania using acoustics. With thousands of clips collected every month, it's not feasible to manually annotate them. So he's made an interactive program called SoundSort, which displays the clips on a grid and clusters them using a t-SNE algorithm. That way similar sounds should be grouped together. He thought he’d post on WILDLABS because the program is open source and might be useful to others and, although they're using for analysis now, it can definitely be improved. Jamie has concluded with two outstanding challenges, check out the thread to find out more. (Be the first to reply)
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Audiomoth Round 6: Live! Alasdair Davies posts that the Arribada Initiative has started a new GroupGets round (23rd Jan) for the updated v1.1 AudioMoth. It will run for the next 30 days, so get in on this round if you are thinking about deploying in late Spring and Summer. Manufacturing and delivery will take ~3 months, so this will be the round you need to get devices in time to match with your field trips. Join the sixth group purchase now! (Learn more)
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Recording Problems with Audiomoths: Alex Holm is in Mauritius where he's been doing acoustic monitoring of Mormopterus acetabulosus for the last couple of months. He's been using audiomoths but has hit a few problems with zero-data files and them not recording properly. David Brown jumped in to help troubleshoot, suggesting that Alex check out the new firmware and that the batteries might be part of the issue. If you have other ideas or are having this issue, jump into this thread. (4 replies)
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- Digital Naturalism Conference: Andrew Quitmeyer has an update and and invite. He's just quit his job as a professor, moved to Gamboa, bought a house, and is starting up his own jungle hacking lab down there! They are going to kick off the opening of the lab in August with another Digital Naturalism Conference. See the post for the open call, for anyone who wants to join them to hack together new tools and artworks in the jungle. (Learn more)
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Zoohackathon 2019: Stuart is keen to learn what's next and how he can get involved. Sophie Maxwell has been in contact with the US Embassy and it sounds like this year's event will be in June, a little earlier than normal. She'll keep the thread updated as she learns more. (4 replies)
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UK Southwest Bat Conference - Audiomoth user meetup? David Brown has put a call out to ask if any audiomothers are attending - would you be interested in a working lunch? (Learn more)
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- What small, low cost, improvements have made your organisation better to work for and why were they needed? Jake Burton is interested to hear what small, manageable actions you have used to to improve your organisations. Maybe you've painted the walls of the office being painted as office staff had low morale, or senior staff have started walking around the office regularly as their staff felt they didn't know them very well. What has worked for you? (Be the first to reply)
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Live Funding Opportunities
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With the aim of advancing rewildling-related technology in the UK and introducing new talent and ideas into the field of rewildling, Ecosulis is thrilled to announce the launch of their first ever Rewilding Tech Challenge. First prize is £5,000 and includes on-going support from the award-winning Ecosulis team.
Due: April 5, 2019
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Wildlife Acoustics is awarding up to $5,000 of product every quarter to grant recipients worldwide in order to enable those involved in animal biology, research, and conservation to do their best work easily and quickly.
Due: Feb 15, 2019
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The World Wildlife Fund is accepting applications for their Professional Development Grants (PDGs), which provide support for mid-career conservationists to pursue short-term, non-degree training to upgrade their knowledge and skills. These trainings can include short courses, certifications, or conferences, among other opportunities.
Due: Feb 1, 2019
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Nat Geo Conservation Technology Grants
The National Geographic Society (NGS) is seeking applications for their new Conservation Technologies RFP to create novel tools and technologies to monitor ecosystem health. Typical proposal requests should be less than $50,000; however, applicants may request up to $150,000.
Proposals accepted on a rolling basis
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- Conservify is seeking a Senior Graphic Designer / Visual Design Lead, UX Designer, Hardware Engineer / Product Design Consultant (Mechanical/Enclosure) with 4-6 years of industry experience developing electronics products (with a preference towards consumer products), and a Senior Software Engineer with front end and back end experience developing rich web and mobile applications. These roles will work with Conservify developing FieldKit, an open-source software and hardware sensor platform launching in 2020 that optimizes data collection and sharing from the field. Closing ASAP
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Stony Brook University's Thorne Lab is seeking a marine mammal technician to join their team of ecologists and oceanographers in conducting line transect surveys and photo-ID in the New York Bight. Closes Jan 24
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IUCN is seeking an all round Web Developer to work on IBAT, a web-based mapping and reporting tool used by companies, governments, researchers, and financial institutions to access global biodiversity datasets with which to make better decisions around the environment. Closes 31st Jan
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The University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology is offering one Ph.D. or Postdoc position involving remote sensing and biodiversity as part of a new NASA-funded project focused on forests in Argentina. Closes Jan 31
- The Levi and Lesmeister Labs at Oregon State University and USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station are seeking a Ph.D. Student Research Assistant to work on automated species detection using bioacoustics and camera trap data. Closes Jan 31
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Conservation X Labs are hiring a Fluidic Systems Engineer, Marketing & Events Coordinator, Operations Director, and Product Design Engineer. Closes Feb 1
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The SMART Partnership is seeking a Strategic Planning Consultant to join them in undertaking a new chapter of planning to accommodate a wider vision and address key areas that ensure the partnership's long term success. Closes March 23
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Search and discover members with our enhanced Member Directory in the People tab of your Dashboard
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Runaway academic with a background in Computer Science and AI. Fascinated by Engineering and Unmanned Systems. Currently working on Self Driving Vehicles. Motivated by applications with an impact. Not technology.
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I'm a policy specialist at Pinterest and passionate about working with WWF and the community at large to combat trafficking endangered animals online. Reach out if you have any questions about what Pinterest is doing/ want to chat about potential projects to collaborate on in the future.
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After a brief career as an aerospace engineer designing experimental satellites, I found my true passion in conservation and ecology. Eventually I earned a Master's in Conservation Technology, and I currently work with invasive species in the western US.
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Dive Deep with our Case Studies
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Arribada just returned from their first thermal camera field trials in Greenland, where they tested the image quality and detection abilities of their chosen thermal sensors in an arctic climate, assessed their prototype camera design, and looked at real installation conditions and areas for monitoring.
They are testing these thermal cameras as a winning team of the 2017 WWF and WILDLABS Human Wildlife Conflict Tech Challenge and hope to build an early animal detection and alert system to warn communities when dangerous animals have entered a community.
Read more >>
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Every year for the last decade, an expert team of horizon scanners, science communicators and researchers has identified the top emerging issues in global conservation.
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In this case study, author Kat Kerlin takes us through a recently published study led by the University of California, Davis on urban hummingbirds. The researchers use passive integrated transponder, or PIT tags, to track these tiny creatures and answer questions about their behavior and health.
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FLIR have announced the Kifaru Rising Project, a multi-year effort in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to deploy FLIR thermal imaging technology to help improve wildlife ranger safety and contribute to their mission to stop illegal wildlife poaching of rhinos across 10 parks and game reserves in Kenya. Kifaru Rising includes a pledge by FLIR of more than $3 million in thermal imaging technology, engineering assistance, and training with the goal of eliminating rhino poaching in Kenya by 2021.
Read more >>
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#Tech4Wildlife can be tricky. Sometimes it takes a village to find the right tool for a task in conservation. With WILDLABS, we're working to grow that village. Download our annual report to learn more.
Download now >>
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