Knowledge Exchange on Conservation Technology

Stephanie O'Donnell, GWP Technical Advisor for Conservation Technology (and WILDLABS Executive Manager) facilitated this knowledge exchange where GWP projects from Indonesia, Mozambique, Panama, and Zimbabwe, and external experts shared their experiences, insights, and lessons learned on integrating technology in conservation activities. The exchange aimed to explore ways of transforming data into actionable and shareable management insights to support wildlife conservation.

This GWP knowledge exchange explored two major aspects of conservation technology:

• Data Collection: What hardware options exist? What are the best practice approaches for selecting and deploying the right hardware to collect the data needed?
• Data Analysis and Insights: What software and analytical tools are available to transform the data collected into actionable insights, manage it over time, and ensure it is accessible by the right people?

This session brought together 60 participants. Featured speakers included:

• Franziska Steinbruch, GWP Mozambique
• Chipangura Chirara, GWP Zimbabwe
• Ricardo Moreno, GWP Panama
• Achmad Pribadi, GWP Indonesia
• Yanira Pop, GWP Belize
• Dan Morris, Google AI for Nature and Society
• Sarah Maston, Microsoft & Project 15​
• Piotr Naskrecki, Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique and Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University

Key takeaways from the knowledge exchange include:

• The use of technology is proving to be successful in supporting biodiversity monitoring, human-wildlife coexistence, and combating poaching and illegal wildlife trade.
• The best practices in using conservation technology shared by GWP teams highlight the importance of taking a systematic approach. This includes speaking with others who are using or developing similar technologies, developing a clear use case that is specific to their needs, conducting a pilot phase to test the technology and involving key stakeholders, and then rolling out the technology while also investing significantly in capacity building and training.
• The significant amount of data that can now be collected with technologies such as camera traps, acoustics, biologgers, and drones poses a data processing and analysis challenge for many conservation projects. While AI and Machine Learning applications, such as MegaDetector and Wildlife Insights, are becoming more accessible and can support the processing of large amounts of data, they may not always be the best solution. Dan Morris highlighted key scenarios where AI may be an option to explore when faced with a large conservation dataset.
• Transforming data into insights to support management and government decision making goes far beyond the analysis and interpretation of a single dataset. It usually requires compiling and processing data from multiple sources, produced by different technologies and sometimes owned and managed by different organizations. To ensure effective data management and sharing, GWP projects emphasized the importance of implementing best practices, including developing data sharing agreements when scaling up from project to country-level databases.