Monday, February 16th, 2025
Speaker: Dr. Dante Wasmuht - Head of AI/ML at Conservation X Labs & Director Sentinel Program
Speaker: Ed Miller - Senior Principal Engineer at Arm and Technical Lead of BearID
Speaker: Dr. Rahul Dodhia - Deputy Director of the AI for Good Research Lab at Microsoft
Speaker: Holger Klinck - Cornell University
This presentation provides an overview of a real-time acoustic monitoring system currently under development at Cornell University. Our advanced sensors will be fully integrated with EarthRanger’s wildlife conservation software, delivering actionable information directly to park managers and conservation teams. Scheduled for initial deployment in Guatemala’s Maya Forest in late 2026, this initiative is supported by the Bezos Earth Fund and developed in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to address urgent conservation challenges in one of Mesoamerica’s most critical biodiversity hotspots. The Maya Forest faces unprecedented threats from illegal deforestation, narco-cattle ranching, and habitat fragmentation, demanding timely information to enable rapid responses. Our acoustic network will deliver real-time alerts for illegal activities, such as unauthorized vehicle access and logging operations, while also providing continuous monitoring of wildlife populations and ecosystem health. This technology establishes a replicable framework for acoustic-based forest protection that can be scaled across the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, creating a new conservation paradigm for the transboundary Maya Forest spanning Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.
Speaker: Kassie Knoetze - Welgevonden Reaction NPC
Technology plays a critical role in safeguarding communities by combining surveillance tools, advanced detection systems, and coordinated communication networks to reduce crime and strengthen response capabilities. Through platforms such as ANPR cameras, joint operations centers, drone surveillance, and integrated reaction systems, teams gain real-time situational awareness and faster incident intervention. These innovations, supported by collaborative law-enforcement and conservation partnerships, create a proactive, unified security environment that protects both people and natural assets.
Speaker: Samantha King - ProtectedSeas
The Marine Monitor (M2) platform uses X-band marine radar and cameras to autonomously document vessel activity in marine protected areas (MPAs). Currently, M2 systems deployed in coastal areas send data to the cloud where machine learning models and other AI help enrich the dataset. By moving this process to the local computer system in the field, M2 users would gain similar insights in remote areas where an internet connection may be intermittent, private, or unreliable.
Speaker: Daning Montaño - Amazon Sacred Headwaters
I work on integrating data collection using camera traps and mobile devices for biodiversity monitoring in collaboration with Indigenous communities, combined with remote sensing tools to assess ecosystem condition and dynamics. My approach explicitly incorporates biocultural dimensions into biodiversity data analysis and continuous monitoring frameworks, linking local knowledge, field observations, and satellite data. I also develop and integrate complementary technological tools to strengthen participatory monitoring and improve the quality, scalability, and operational use of biodiversity information for conservation decision-making.
Speaker: Gunthar Hartwig - Fundación Maquipucuna
For almost 40 years, Fundación Maquipucuna has been at the forefront of conservation efforts in the Choco-Andino cloud forests of Western Ecuador. A particular focus is the Andean Spectacled Bear, and the organization is a leader in science, habitat conservation, and research into human/bear dynamics in the region. In this lightning talk, we will present a brief overview of the organization’s ambitions to leverage AI/ML, and solicit engagement from the community to help further these efforts.
Speaker: Maria Fernanda Vela Huaman - Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia
Application of YOLO (You Only Look Once) to automate species detection in camera trap images.
Speaker: Andrew MacIntosh - Wilder Institute
The Wilder Institute is a Canadian conservation organization that also runs the Calgary Zoo. We lead and collaborate on over a dozen conservation programs in Canada and internationally and use a variety of technologies to help us achieve our goals. These range from deploying satellite receivers on head-started burrowing owls to testing remote weight stations with Vancouver Island Marmots to installing camera traps at potential reintroduction sites for mountain bongo to developing computer vision models to monitor the behavior of fishers slated for translocation. This lightning talk introduces some of our applications of technology and highlights areas we’d love to scale up with edge AI in the future.
Speaker: Rai Delgado
Field-based wildlife research generates complex and imperfect datasets shaped by logistical, environmental, and biological constraints. From the perspective of a field biologist working with apex predator monitoring in tropical ecosystems, this talk outlines common challenges in collecting and interpreting movement and observation data. Rather than presenting results, the focus is on identifying open questions where AI-based approaches could support behavior inference, pattern detection, and decision-making in wildlife research. The goal is to foster dialogue between field ecologists and AI practitioners around realistic data limitations.
Speaker: András Zábó - Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
This short talk introduces RAPID, an open-source lightweight algorithm for patterned animal re-identification. As a traditional method it requires no training and achieves high query processing speeds on various hardware (even only on CPU), while maintaining high prediction accuracy.
Speaker: Tanya Berger-Wolf, PhD - Professor, The Ohio State University
Presenter: Diego Rivera Buendia - GainForest
Tainá is a community-owned, AI-powered platform that enables Indigenous and local communities to document biodiversity, climate impacts, and traditional ecological knowledge in accessible and culturally appropriate ways.
Presenter: Santiago Ruiz Guzman - University of Pittsburgh
Presenter: Jenna Kline - OSU
Email: kline.377@osu.edu