Conservation and tech

 Michael - Every other Thursday

In a world where modern computer technology is becoming regarded as a threat, it’s interesting to see AI, drones, and photo recognition being put to purposes we can all agree are worthwhile and useful. What’s more, a lot of the research being done for these applications is happening here in South Africa.

We’ve become used to the idea that drones carry bombs – often aimed at civilians; AI is out to take jobs and steal books, and perhaps suck up all the electricity; and automated photo recognition is designed to spy out sites to destroy and follow people who may be troublesome to authoritarian governments.

The thing about AI is the emphasis is on it doing things humans can do well (e.g. writing mysteries) rather than on focusing on things humans can’t do.

However, a recent article in South Africa’s online newspaper, The Daily Maverick, shows how these are tools that have some very valuable roles to play. Since my own research interests were in image processing and remote sensing, I was intrigued (and a little skeptical) and so I had a more detailed look. I concluded that although it’s early days, all these technologies have promise to assist with wild life management and conservation.

A drone picture of an elephant helping himself to Sisal plants at night.
The picture is in the thermal infrared showing the animal
very clearly against the background.
Picture courtesy Conservation Through Tourism

For example, take elephants in areas where borders are lines on maps and fences are designed to keep in cattle. Probably more than lions, they are a danger to people and so indirectly to themselves. Elephants are smart and know that it’s best to break into crop lands at night while people are asleep, and a herd of 100 elephants can do an enormous amount of damage in a few hours. Electric fences with alarms are well and good. So you know you have 100 elephants in your crops. Now what?

A herd wonders through the bush - easily identified in the TIR
Photo courtesy Conservation Through Tourism

A group called Conservation through Tourism has been experimenting with drone and remote sensing technologies. The drones have cameras that take high resolution images but also thermal images. One can see the elephants clearly against the vegetation even on a dark night and through trees. Even better, the elephants don’t like these drones. They make a noise and can buzz you, so you move off. A couple of them can actually herd you. They know where you are, they know where they want you to go and not to go, and there’s not much you can do about them as long as they keep their distance. Once you start to move off, it’s just a matter of steering you back home. That can be done by a human watching a computer screen in a Land Rover, or, even better, by an artificial intelligence system analyzing the scene using GPS location information.

Another potentially valuable application is remotely counting species populations in conservation areas. This has been done for many years by people in the Kruger park area at least once a year. The technique is to use helicopters with human spotters counting everything they see. By having multiple counters on the aircraft, the data can be averaged and then a clever model predicts what’s been missed species by species. If you saw 10 Impala, you probably missed 2.3 and so on.

Gaia drone. Not one of the toy variety...
Photo courtesy Daily Maverick

How about if the whole thing could be done automatically at a much lower cost? Once again you need a drone outfitted with a high resolution camera that takes multispectral images. That means its photographs are at different wave lengths of light (some that we can’t see in the infrared) so that the AI system that afterwards analyses the images can distinguish not only between different individuals but also between different species. Because of the different wavelengths, animals could be recognized even under cover. Of course, there will still be individuals missed, but now the spotter is always the same so there’s consistency. Absolute numbers are usually less important than trends in wildlife conservation. (I’ve been one of these aerial counters, and it’s really hard to be consistent.)

Herd of buffalo drinking.
They have to be correctly separated from the hippos
Photo courtesy Timbavati Nature Reserve

That is just what Project Gaia is. In a recent survey to the West of the Kruger National Park, the drone flew 20,000km (12,500 miles) and took nearly 3 million photographs. No way humans could even imagine analyzing that, but a specially trained AI system can – first identifying the animal species and then adding it to the count.

One of the appealing advantages is that the drones fly quietly at 100 meters’ height and don’t disturb the animals. Helicopters are noisy and often scare animals. Apart from the distress that may cause, it may also result in the animals running far enough to be counted twice…

Of course, these are niche applications. It’s the military and the big tech companies that have the money. Regrettably, the AI, drone, and aerial survey companies will follow the money. At least other applications can pick up the scraps.