Via Fast Company, a look at how an IoT conservation network supports wildlife protection in Kenya by leveraging cloud-based sensors and networks to collect, monitor, and analyze environmental data in real time:
Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) and Connected Conservation Foundation are protecting the most vulnerable animals and natural resources in Kenya with Africa’s largest landscape-wide Internet of Things conservation network.
The project aims to enhance wildlife and natural resource conservation by leveraging cloud-based sensors and networks to collect, monitor, and analyze environmental data in real time.
This massive undertaking will contribute critical digital infrastructure to help Kenyan partners measure and achieve the global biodiversity targets set out at COP 15, the 2022 UN biodiversity conference, to conserve and manage at least 30% of the world’s natural habitats by 2030.
The data combined with analytics and conservation tools are geared toward effectively protecting and managing wildlife, ensuring peace, and improving the livelihood of the people of northern Kenya, says Samuel Lekimaroro, wildlife protection manager at Northern Rangelands Trust, a Kenyan conservation organization that works to protect and restore the Northern Rangelands of Kenya.
NRT’S IOT CONSERVATION NETWORK: THE FIRST IN KENYA
The NRT’s Internet of Things (IoT) conservation network, the first of its kind in Kenya, is made possible by the Connected Conservation Foundation, which has brought together a coalition of private- and public-sector partners including Cisco, Actility, 51 Degrees, and EarthRanger.
The IoT network and high-bandwidth communication backbone currently covers about 7.4 million acres of wilderness in Kenya—a figure that includes 22 of NRT’s community-led conservancies and 4 private reserves with plans to bring more on board to include more of the region, says Sophie Maxwell, executive director of the Connected Conservation Foundation. More than 190 new sensors have been deployed to all parks, with more scheduled in the next few weeks, bringing the total to 250.
For this project, the LoRaWAN network management is done using Actility’s ThingPark platform. While Actility is on the network side, Cisco builds the LoRaWAN gateways or base stations and Actility manages the base stations and the end devices to collect the data and provide the data to application servers.
“What we provide is the core network that connects the base station and the end devices,” says Alper Yegin, chief technology officer at Actility, a provider of low-power networks that play a vital role in IoT infrastructure. “Then on the technical side, there are also sensors coming from various device makers as well as NRT and Connected Conservation.”
NRT and Connected Conservation manage the parks and identify what the use cases are and then they bring all the technologies together. As such, NRT and the Connected Conservation Foundation are the users of this deployment and Cisco is the technology provider, according to Yegin. “We’re providing an innovative solution to manage gateways, integrate sensors, and monitor network operations in real time,” he says.
REVOLUTIONIZING CONSERVATION PROGRAMS
The capabilities of this IoT technology are revolutionizing the way conservation programs operate, offering long-lasting, cost-effective, and secure sensors to combat poaching and protect endangered species, Yegin says.
The LoRaWAN IoT sensors are perfect for deploying in the wildlife parks, tracking animals, tracking equipment and vehicles, tracking weather conditions as well as for monitoring the working conditions of machinery, Yegin says. And since the sensors have very low power consumption, once they’re placed on the animals, they can last for nearly 10 years, sometimes more, he says.
“The other special thing with this technology is that it uses unlicensed band, meaning one does not have to acquire a very expensive and limited license from the government,” Yegin says. “So it’s pretty much like Wi-Fi today—anyone can put up Wi-Fi and the same is true for LoRaWAN. As such, this also drives the cost down, which is essential in such wide-area deployments.”
Wildlife protection is a perfect use case for LPWAN IoT, given the vast territories to monitor, the necessity for long-lasting, low-cost sensors, and the requirement for secure technology to combat poaching, he says.
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The various sensors, which include rhino, lion, cheetah, and leopard trackers, livestock trackers, and ranger and vehicle trackers, provide critical data that is then visualized in EarthRanger for analysis and insights so that NRT can take any necessary conservation actions. EarthRanger is a tool that collects, integrates, and displays all historical and real-time data available from a protected area to enable organizations to make better decisions about how to manage those areas.
For example, data from the ranger, vehicle, and wildlife sensors enable rangers to monitor and respond to rhino threats to prevent poaching, share information on sick or vulnerable animals, boost conservation management strategies, and redeploy security measures between conservancies.
INCREASE IN ENDANGERED BLACK RHINO POPULATION
Black rhinos are still critically endangered animals because of the demand for rhino horns on the international black market. Kenya, however, is one of the few places in the world where black rhino populations are increasing due to the success of these conservation efforts, Maxwell says.
Consequently, it’s crucial to establish safe and connected rangelands for these endangered species to roam, according to Maxwell.
Having the tags on the rhinos enables the NRT to remove the fences and create larger connected habitats for the rhinos to roam, she says. And it has helped boost the black rhino numbers in Kenya by 10%.
“The technology is what we call a reserve-area network solution—and that is connectivity, communications, and sensors that bring real-time data back into an operations room,” she says. “That data is then visualized on the map through a range of software and that enables people to track the movement of people, the movement of wildlife, and the movement of the ranger teams. And that all happens in real time.”
The battery-powered LoRaWAN-enabled sensors communicate via a long-range, ultra-low data rate connection, resulting in longer battery life. Additionally, LoRa sensors are a fraction of the cost of satellite tracking tags—transforming how conservation programs operate because being able to deploy many sensors means capturing more data, enabling NRT to demonstrate the effectiveness of its conservation efforts, which is really valuable, according to Maxwell.
“Previously, NRT and our member conservancies used an analog system, and we were unable to observe what was happening in the landscape in terms of wildlife trends, asset monitoring, and security patrol coordination,” Lekimaroro says. “We were only communicating via radio between the conservancies and the Joint Operations and Communications Center (JOCC).”
Through Connected Conservation, NRT is now able to successfully protect and monitor wildlife, coordinate field patrols, and support the government and communities in peace efforts from an informed point of knowledge/data assessed by EarthRanger, according to Lekimaroro.
“All field patrol teams can be monitored and supported by the team in headquarters, which is the central location, from the JOCC,” he says. “Through technology, intra- and inter-conservancy communications have improved, allowing for more efficient surveillance, wildlife protection, and monitoring operations.”
The increased data transmission into the centralized JOCC system has helped the NRT assess patrol efforts, wildlife trends, patterns, and data generation for management decision making, Lekimaroro says.
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Courtesy of Outside, an interesting article on how – over the past two decades – eBird has become the go-to online platform for scientists and hobbyists alike to upload and share bird observations:
In July 1992, two Danish birders visiting Patagonia, Arizona reported the first-ever, mega-rare cinnamon hummingbird in the United States. Back then, reporting rare birds required phoning in observations to a “rare bird phone tree,” usually via the nearest pay phone—and hoping that word got out. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t. In this case, a couple of other out-of-towners—a birder from Mississippi and another from Nebraska—saw the species. The Nebraskan photographed the hummingbird, flew home, developed the slide film, and snail-mailed photos to the Arizona committee in charge of validating unusual sightings. Only then did word spread, but it was too late: the hummingbird was gone, and Arizona birders missed it.
This kind of tragedy would never befall Arizona birders today. Now, within minutes of seeing a rarity, birders can text friends, alert listservs, post sightings to Facebook rare-birds groups, and—the choice of many—submit observations to eBird, a global online database.
At its most basic level, eBird documents bird sightings. A team at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology created the platform in 2002, and it became widely used by birders within a few years. As of 2020, it has collected more than 860 million global bird observations from over 597,000 registered eBirders. By sheer numbers alone, eBird is one of the world’s largest citizen-science projects. It is now used to understand species distributions, population trends, migration pathways, and even habitat use.
“If used properly, it should be a tool to understand bird populations at scale in ways we never have before, and to apply that to conservation actions,” Marshall Iliff, an eBird project leader, told me. Scientists use eBird’s open-access data to study evolution and movement of invasive species and to highlight the importance of public lands in conservation. The eBird team has also created conservation-oriented status and trend maps for hundreds of species, and eBird data are used to create live bird-migration forecasts.
At least 120 million observations are submitted per year, many through the handy eBird app, a kind of Strava-Yelp-Pokémon Go hybrid for birders. The app doesn’t ID birds for you—Cornell offers another app called Merlin for that—but instead provides an easy way to record and upload the birds you spot. To log sightings, you start a checklist (similar to the way you’d start a run on a smartwatch) and the app automatically pulls your location via GPS. You can choose hot spots near you, which generate lists of species you’re likely to see created from data submitted by users in those areas. The app tracks time and distance traveled while you “tick” species and numbers of birds seen and heard. It even lets you keep an offline checklist, so you aren’t inconvenienced without cell service. On the web platform, users can upload photos and audio recordings to beef up checklist documentation. Once submitted, the observations join thousands of others being made on the platform at any given time.
The scope and accessibility of eBird make it a resource for birders and scientists alike. The majority of eBirders use the platform as a handy bird-logging tool. I study birds for my Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico, and I also watch them recreationally. I use eBird almost daily for everything from tracking how far I walk while scanning treetops, to planning vacation birding spots, to scouting remote Andean field sites for my doctoral work. Anyone can review lists of species in hot spots like the Ramble in Central Park stretching back decades, study maps of where birds are seen, analyze how frequently certain birds appear at different times of the year, and peruse photos and audio recordings from all over the globe.
Undeniably, eBird has changed birding culture, a quirky world already full of strong opinions. It brings birders together and allows for rapid information sharing. It’s also created new—and sometimes contentious—etiquette and social dynamics.
The closest thing to an official guide for birding etiquette is the American Birding Association’s Code of Birding Ethics, which emphasizes a few basic tenets that can be summarized as: Respect fellow birders, their diverse interests, and skill levels. Welcome and encourage beginners. Respect birds and other wildlife. Don’t trespass on private or restricted property. Be mindful of space and privacy when birding in groups. (Since the pandemic, a new set of guidelines on birding and social distancing has been added to the code, titled “Keep your eyes on the sky and your butt close to home!”)
Birders are typically friendly, both in person and online, with email exchanges often ending in well-wishes of “Good birding!” But a code of ethics is necessary because, as with any activity that can become competitive, birding has a dark side. Rivalry, animosity, and ego have long been hallmarks of the bird world. Even the famous naturalist John James Audubon plagiarized and invented species to convince members of the English nobility to promote his work. Birders sometimes go to semi-desperate lengths to track down birds, and online platforms like eBird that rank birders and sightings, akin to athletes on leaderboards, can amplify competition.
Although eBird is primarily an observation tool and a scientific database, the site still allows users to size each other up: anyone can view rankings of the top eBirders in different hot spots, counties, states, and entire countries. You can even peruse a list of the top 100 eBirders in the world. These types of competitive lists have birthed trends like endless Big Years, in which birders constantly compete to see who can spot the most species in a year. In turn, such fads have spurred counterinitiatives, like the five-mile-radius challenge, which encourages birders to enjoy birds in local areas rather than seeking them out in far-flung places. Local birding has soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many work from home and explore their own backyards.
Screenshots from the author’s eBird app showing checklists and hot spots in her home state of New Mexico (Photo: eBird)
If an eBird user makes their profile public, other eBirders can view their recently submitted checklists and photos. Essentially, this means that birders can keep tabs on one another. Last October, when a friend was in Belize, I lived vicariously through his trip by peeking at his eBird checklists each day, and they brightened my mood amid dropping fall temperatures in New Mexico. I’ve also received unexpected text or Facebook messages from birders with quips like, “Looks like you had an awesome day!” after they saw checklists I submitted. These interactions shouldn’t be surprising, given the public nature of eBird data, but it occasionally strikes me as odd that people I don’t know well can see exactly where I walked for eight hours and exactly how many Wilson’s warblers I counted while I did so.
The eBird database also maintains a frequently updated alerts bulletin called the Rare Bird Alert. The RBA, as many lovingly call it, pushes notifications to users so they can quickly find out who’s seeing what and where. The excitement of rare, sought-after species fuels cultures of chasing and listing that emphasize the prestige of finding rare birds and seeing more species than others.
Chasing rarities is certainly exciting—like an ephemeral, high-stakes treasure hunt where the pot of gold has wings—but the hobby can also turn into an obsession. I’ve heard stories of constant “twitching,” or compulsive bird chasing, nearly ending serious romantic relationships. For some, a reputation for finding rare birds becomes a noteworthy part of their identity. Last fall I met a birder at a popular migrant trap, a small patch of trees with a trickle of water, on the windswept plains of eastern New Mexico. He introduced himself to me by name, followed by, “You might recognize me from the Rare Bird Alert.”
A thirst for finding rarities can also encourage behavior that goes against common courtesy. One eBird app reviewer, “Notta Realname,” noted that after spotting an unusual bird for their locality, birders rang their doorbell, asking to sit in their backyard so they could see the bird. Notta Realname reported being “flummoxed” but welcomed the birders into their backyard anyway and then became frustrated when the unexpected guests displayed “questionable” ethics. Notta Realname turned away subsequent birders and then changed their privacy settings. All birders I know would agree: showing up at a stranger’s doorstep unannounced is bad form.
Because eBird is not a social-media site—there is no way to follow friends or comment on sightings—these types of interactions filter onto other platforms. Last fall an 11-year-old friend and beginning birder ticked the wrong species of quail on her checklist, which made it look like a bird from Africa and the Arabian Peninsula had been sighted in central New Mexico. Rather than wait for eBirders to flag the mistake respectfully, someone made fun of her in a Facebook birding group.
Occasionally, eBird itself is the site of bad behavior. Recently, a respected birder misidentified a common lazuli bunting for a more unusual species: a dickcissel, or “DICK” in four-letter shorthand speak, a sparrowlike bird of open grasslands easily recognized by its “flatulent buzz” calls. Several experienced birders tried correcting his mistake, but he stubbornly refused to change his ID, insisting the bird was simply “odd-looking.”
As with any activity that can become competitive, birding has a dark side.
I had my own run-in with bad behavior on eBird last November. I’d gotten wind via the eBird Rare Bird Alert that a vagrant woodcock had been spotted along the Rio Grande near Albuquerque, New Mexico, just 15 minutes from my house. American woodcocks are iconic little solitary shorebirds that live in forests and constantly bob while they walk, and they’re rarely seen out west. Naturally, I had to chase this bird. At 7 A.M. on a Sunday, I found myself walking along the river, kicking up piles of dead leaves in an attempt to flush the woodcock.
After a few hours, I’d had no luck. As I headed back to my car, I passed a group of birders also searching for the woodcock. We chatted for a bit before a well-known birder—the one who misidentified the DICK—recognized me. With a facetious smile, he asked, “How’s your goose ID going?”
The other birders stared blankly while I brimmed with silent shock and anger. He was publicly mocking me—a week before, he’d emailed me about a misidentified Ross’s goose I posted on eBird. Embarrassed, I quickly updated my observation. Our interaction should have ended there, but instead he was now calling me out for my mistake—gleefully—in front of others.
“Fine,” I said curtly, before walking back to my car.
When I got home, I ranted to my significant other, who is used to hearing too much about birds. He thought I sounded more wound up than usual—eBird can sometimes do that to you.
In recent years, eBird has grown tremendously. Between 2019 and 2020 alone, observations submitted to the database increased by 24 percent. Some believe that the rise in new eBird users is associated with a dangerous level of data imprecision. Can the data be trustworthy if they come from millions of observers who might not be able to correctly identify common backyard birds? As one well-known California birder has been known to say, “The average birder is below average.”
This is where data-vetting steps, like eBird’s review process, come in. Each eBird reviewer is a volunteer selected for their knowledge or experience in a state, region, or country. Reviewers act as quality filters and check observations for accuracy, detail, and validity. They may contact observers to request specific details about unusual sightings, point out misidentifications, or ask for justification about higher-than-expected numbers reported for a particular species. Some reviewers even go out of their way to coach users unfamiliar with eBird on how to use the database and app to enhance the quality of the information. This verification effort, in turn, makes eBird data more valuable to birders, citizen scientists, and professional scientists.
“My goal when reviewing is to make sure that an observation is documented well enough so that, in 100 years, someone who doesn’t know who the observer is can say, ‘This is reasonable,’” says Lauren Harter, an eBird reviewer of more than nine years for the Colorado River area.
Given their status, reviewers are privy to moments of birding vulnerability, such as when birders make identification mistakes. Errors are expected—even the world’s best can confuse extremely similar-looking immature gulls or drab flycatchers. If an eBird reviewer catches an ID mistake, usually from a photo, they reach out to the eBird user, typically with a polite template email that starts with, “Thank you for being a part of eBird. To help make sure that eBird can be used for scientific research and conservation, volunteers like me follow up on unusual sightings as a part of the eBird data quality process.” They’ll then explain why the species is listed incorrectly and request that the user change the ID to the correct species.
Given their status, reviewers are privy to moments of birding vulnerability.
This mutual respect between reviewers and birders tracks with offline birding etiquette, but sometimes interactions can turn to rudeness. The birder who made fun of me for my goose mistake, for example, was a New Mexico eBird reviewer, and one birder friend, after hearing the story, called the reviewer’s comment to me “way out of line.”
The relationship between reviewers and observers can be tricky to navigate. Reviewers sometimes screen as many as several hundred sightings per month, and they certainly deal with their fair share of user mistakes. I became increasingly respectful of the work they do as I spoke to more reviewers for this story. But some believe that reviewers exercise their power unfairly—for example, by accepting rare sightings by birders with good reputations, even with scarce documentation—and impose personal rules about how birding should be done in “their” territory.
Last year a friend birded at a popular eBird hot spot outside Raleigh, North Carolina, during a work trip. After submitting his checklist, he was contacted by a local reviewer who, in typical birder fashion, sent him overly detailed instructions about how to walk around the lake. My friend, a birder of 34 years, felt like his freedom to explore had been violated. There was a right and wrong way to walk around a lake now? “I was bemused that someone would want to exert control over how others experience a place,” he told me. “The idea that a hot spot has to be birded in a certain way and recorded in a certain way really takes the enjoyment out of visiting new places.”
Despite the fact that eBird has become an almost unstoppable force, some birders have resisted the eBird tide. They see the platform—and the “Cornell mafia,” as one birder put it—as supplanting traditional methods of birding that many still prefer. Observers who don’t use eBird still rely heavily on listservs or Facebook birding groups, but this can limit access to information.
“It makes you almost have to be an eBirder to keep track of this stuff anymore,” says Gary Rosenberg, a professional bird-watching guide of more than 35 years. “I call it eBorg,” he says, referencing the Star Trek character who transforms people into drones through assimilation. “If you’re not on eBird, you’re currently just sort of left out in the cold.”
On the flip side, eBird has encouraged people who may not have birded previously to contribute sightings in a popular forum. This citizen-science participation aspect of the platform, coupled with movements like #BlackBirdersWeek, are important for creating a diverse and equitable outdoors community. Increased representation and environmental awareness are sorely needed, given the estimated 2.9 billion birds lost since 1970. “Anything we can do to supercharge an interest in nature is a worthwhile goal unto itself,” says eBird’s Iliff. “I don’t think we’re going to have people who are willing to vote for climate change or preservation of public lands or endangered species, or really care about the world around us, without a level of public engagement.”
For all its unexpected dynamics, eBird has succeeded in connecting birders and scientists in ways that weren’t possible before. Last fall, while browsing through images of the species I study for my Ph.D., the giant hummingbird, I came across a photo of a bird that appeared to be wearing one of the tracking devices I use to research their migration. The eBirder who posted the photo listed his email address publicly, so I reached out to see if he had others. He was friendly, and he happily sent more my way. I flipped through them that night, amazed that a stranger’s photos might have unintended value for my research, and I wondered what other gems remained to be discovered on eBird.
An announcement of an important new initiative that will help catalyze data-driven wildlife conservation by harnessing the power of technology and science to unite millions of photos from camera trap projects around the world and reveal how wildlife is faring, in near real-time:
Wildlife Insights is combining field and sensor expertise, cutting edge technology and advanced analytics to enable people everywhere to share wildlife data and better manage wildlife populations. Anyone can upload their images to the Wildlife Insights platform so that species can be automatically identified using artificial intelligence. This will save thousands of hours, freeing up more time to analyze and apply insights to conservation.
By aggregating images from around the world, Wildlife Insights is providing access to the timely data we need to effectively monitor wildlife. We are creating a community where anyone can explore images from projects around the world and leverage data at scale to influence policy.
Wildlife Insights provides the tools and technology to connect wildlife “big data” to decision makers. This full circle solution can help advance data-driven conservation action to reach our ultimate goal: recovering global wildlife populations.
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Via Oracle, an interesting look at how technology has facilitated the world’s largest, most comprehensive longitudinal collection of data on any wild gorilla population—and made it available to the larger scientific and educational communities via the cloud:
Fifty years ago, Dian Fossey climbed into the remote mountains of Rwanda to study the area’s endangered gorillas. Today, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI) is using cutting-edge data collection and study tools to further her work and ensure the survival and revival of the species.
Urged on by legendary archaeologist Louis Leakey and her own growing interest in the great apes, Fossey began carefully chronicling the gorillas’ behavior—day after day—for years. Her observations eventually made her one of the most influential primatologists in the world—and made her subjects famous as well.
“What she brought to bear on conservation was the sense that you can’t do it for a little while. You have to be there for a sustained length of time. You must be there all day, every day. It needs to be continuous,” says Clare Richardson, president emeritus of the DFGFI. Fossey’s data, and the attention it brought to gorillas, lends them a distinction both encouraging and alarming: It is the only population of great apes in the world that has grown, doubling in size from 240 to 480 individuals during the past five decades.
“When [Dian Fossey] first went to Rwanda, the popular opinion of gorillas was King Kong, a ferocious beast,” says Tara Stoinski, president, CEO, and chief scientific officer for the DFGFI. “By getting to know each of those gorillas individually, by studying their families and seeing how much they are like us, she was able to change the world’s opinion. Their nickname now is ‘gentle giant,’ which is much more appropriate. She was just one person, but she literally changed the course of history for a species.”
Now, with Oracle’s funding and technology, Rwanda’s great apes are not the only ones who can benefit from Fossey’s legacy of data collection and analysis. Scientists researching a wide range of animals around the globe will also be able to more easily collect and manage the data they need.
A Long-Term Commitment Pays Off
Oracle’s involvement with the DFGFI began after company founder Larry Ellison saw the 1988 Fossey biopic Gorillas in the Mist and was impressed by her life of dedication and sacrifice. Oracle became one of the first US for-profit companies to take a leadership role in the protection of mountain gorillas and is the fund’s longest-term corporate supporter.
“That’s a very long time for a small conservation NGO to be operating, particularly in a part of the world that has faced a lot of challenges. Three decades of support from Oracle has let us be on the ground, day in and day out, that whole time,” says Stoinski. And that continuous presence has been key to the recovery of a species that was once expected to become extinct before the year 2000.
According to Colleen Cassity, executive director of Oracle Corporate Citizenship, working with the fund has also provided an opportunity for three branches of Oracle philanthropy to work together: Oracle Giving supports the DFGFI with cash and technology grants; the Oracle Education Foundation uses data sets from the fund to show students how to extract knowledge from data and visualize it; and Oracle Volunteers coach those classes.
“By working with real scientific field data, the students discover what data can tell them about the real world and then find answers to real-world questions. It’s a beautiful synthesis of three different threads of Oracle’s philanthropy, all focused on developing that next generation of conservationists,” says Cassity.
A New Approach to Wildlife Data Collection and Management
Four years ago, Oracle’s investment in the organization took a new turn. Fund leaders asked Oracle for a technology investment to transform the way its scientists collected and managed data. The resulting effort caused a cascade of changes, empowering not only the fund’s field researchers but also providing a downloadable app that any researcher in the world could use for any animal population, wild or captive. The collaboration also made the fund’s data—the world’s largest, most comprehensive longitudinal collection of data on any wild gorilla population—available to the larger scientific and educational communities.
“We’re an international organization, so having our data in the cloud is great for us because it means that people working in Rwanda can go in and enter that data that day, then scientists can go look at that data and see what they’ve seen and start using it,” says Stoinski.
Before the technology partnership, field scientists wrote their observations in notebooks during the day and then would transfer the data into a computer later—a time-intensive and error-prone process. Now scientists enter data directly into a hand-held tablet and upload to Oracle Database Cloud. “Mountain gorillas are critically endangered. There are about 880 of them left on the planet, so we want to have data in real time that we can use to see if there’s a conservation threat. Having the data up in the cloud really helps,” says Stoinski.
The first part of the project involved moving 50 years of field data into Oracle Database in the Cloud. Oracle Senior Principal Consultant Ritu Srivastava led the development team and worked closely with researchers at the DFGFI’s headquarters in Atlanta, and with systems administrators in Rwanda. First, Srivastava’s team migrated much of the historical data into the cloud, preserving it and making it available for further analysis. During the next phase, Srivastava’s team integrated Oracle R into Oracle Database, providing a platform for scientists to use the open-source R statistical programming language to create sophisticated graphical visualizations—a labor of love for the Oracle team, says Srivastava.
Once the legacy data was in the cloud, the next step was supporting the development of an app for researchers to use while observing the gorillas, enabling them to enter data directly into tablets connected to Oracle Database Cloud. Oracle provided key funding for the app development, which is free on iTunes.
The app isn’t specific to gorillas–it can be modified for use on any animal. “That’s been part of the challenge with other data collection apps,” says Stoinski. “They’ve been designed specifically for one type of animal or one species, and we worked really hard to make this very easy to modify for whatever animal you want to work with.”
Fostering the Next Generation of Conservationists
Beyond empowering scientists, this new data is inspiring the conservationists of tomorrow. “One of the most exciting parts of my job is getting people excited about gorillas, particularly young people,” says Stoinski. “We host every single biology student from the national university in Rwanda at our center every year—we teach classes, take them to see wildlife, show them how to collect conservation data. We also work with groups here in the States and with the Oracle Education Foundation to get young students to understand what’s happening to these animals in the wild.”
What does the future hold? According to Stoinski, “We must continue our on-the-ground protection work—gorillas are among the world’s most endangered animals and so ensuring their long-term survival is still a very important need. In addition, the continued work with the next generation of scientists is the future of conservation, getting them excited about science and how you use science to make real-world decisions. We would like to see that grow and strengthen, particularly for the African students we work with to ensure that they’re getting top-of-the-line mentorship so when they go into positions in their government or other NGOs, they’re really well-equipped to be leaders in their communities.”
“Baba Dioum, a Senegalese conservationist, said, ‘We will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught,’” says Cassity. “That’s why it is so special for us in the Oracle Educational Foundation to help students understand the fund’s work and know the gorillas as unique individuals.” Cassity believes that there’s room in the world for profitable commerce—and also for doing good without reward.
“Gorillas are so like us—98% genetically identical—that they can teach us about ourselves, the world we share, and how we fit into it. We don’t want to live in a world without gorillas.”
New technical innovations such as location-tracking devices, GPS and satellite communications, remote sensors, laser-imaging technologies, light detection and ranging” (LIDAR) sensing, high-resolution satellite imagery, digital mapping, advanced statistical analytical software and even biotechnology and synthetic biology are revolutionizing conservation in two key ways: first, by revealing the state of our world in unprecedented detail; and, second, by making available more data to more people in more places. The mission of this blog is to track these technical innovations that may give conservation the chance – for the first time – to keep up with, and even get ahead of, the planet’s most intractable environmental challenges. It will also examine the unintended consequences and moral hazards that the use of these new tools may cause.Read More
