Five-year rainforest tech competition culminates with four winners
The task at hand was nothing short of grueling. In the depths of the Amazon Rainforest earlier this year, it was a mad scramble as six teams deployed cutting-edge technology…
Drones News
At the ‘Biodiversity Olympics,’ scientists work to democratize rainforest tech
If long-term field research is like a marathon, then this was the 100-meter sprint. Over the course of 72 hours, participants scrambled to gather biodiversity data, analyze it, and generate…
Are the Amazon’s biggest trees dying? Forest coroners investigate
AMAZONAS, Brazil: Two researchers wearing long-sleeved shirts and pants to resist mosquitos, and high boots to block snake bites, gaze at a shattered tree. It lies on the ground garlanded…
Study finds best plants for bee health and conservation in North America
What's on the menu for a healthy bee? A team of researchers has delved into the world of bee nutrition, analyzing pollen to identify the best food sources for these…
On foot and by drone, radio tracking helps rehabilitate pangolins in Vietnam
When the organization Save Vietnam’s Wildlife receives a pangolin rescued from the wildlife trade, it can take months to remind the scaly, housecat-sized mammal how to be a pangolin again.…
Drone cameras help scientists distinguish between drought stress & fungus in oaks
How do you identify sick oaks? For a long time, detecting unhealthy oaks and identifying the disease afflicting them required a lot of manual labor. Scientists often looked out of…
Tech to recover rainforest: Interview with Osa Conservation’s Carolina Pinto & Paulina Rodriguez
For Carolina Pinto and Paulina Rodriguez, the story of the Osa Peninsula embodies one of hope. The diverse rainforest ecosystem in Costa Rica, home to plants and animals seen nowhere…
Origami-inspired sensor platforms tumble like leaves to study forests
The next time you see a leaf gliding down from above, you might want to take a closer look. For all you know, what’s tumbling down could possibly be a…
Swab a leaf and find a species. Or 50, thanks to eDNA
When they embarked upon an experiment to swab leaves at Kibale National Park in Uganda in June 2022, Christina Lynggaard, Jan Gogarten and Patrick Omeja had little to no expectations.…
To protect the oceans, we must map them (commentary)
How had we missed this until now? An undersea mountain as tall as three Eiffel Towers. DDT contamination spread across an area of the seabed as large as San Francisco.…
When wildlife surveillance tech ‘watches’ people
In 2017, a camera installed on the fringes of Corbett Tiger Reserve in northern India photographed an unsuspecting woman. The local forest staff had set up the device discreetly to…
‘Immense potential’ in tech: Q&A with Wildlife Drones CEO Debbie Saunders
Debbie Saunders’s quest to make wildlife tracking more efficient started in the early 2000s. The wild ecologist was studying swift parrots (Lathamus discolor) in Australia and found it challenging to…
Drones improve counts of rare Cao-vit gibbon, identify conservation priorities
Drones flying above the treetops of a limestone forest on the border of Vietnam and China are helping conservationists develop plans to recover one of the world’s rarest primates: the…
New Tree Tech: Cutting-edge drones give reforestation a helping hand
Seed-sowing drones and the latest biotechnology could help restore degraded forests at an unprecedented scale — a high-tech nature-based climate solution already at work, and one that shows tremendous promise.
New Tree Tech: AI, drones, satellites and sensors give reforestation a boost
Climate change has generated a rush in tree planting, with many hurried initiatives failing. But high-tech solutions — artificial intelligence, robotics, satellites and sensors — can help tree-planting projects succeed every step of the way.
Scientists hope to tech the heck out of eDNA sampling with drones, robots
SINGAPORE — A huge drone hums and hovers above the canopy of a tree. Just as one might start to think that the show is over, the action begins. Slowly,…
Meet the tech projects competing for a $10m prize to save rainforests
SINGAPORE — Macaques look on from trees as a round of applause breaks out. After repeated attempts, a team has managed to fly a drone and drop a sensor platform…
New digital tool maps blue carbon ecosystems in high resolution
When Hurricane Dorian blazed its trail of destruction through the Bahamas in 2019, it ravaged the country’s mangroves. Almost overnight, coastal communities were deprived of a natural barrier that protected…
Competing for rainforest conservation: Q&A with XPRIZE’s Kevin Marriott
SINGAPORE — It’s been a hectic few weeks for Kevin Marriott. On a humid May morning in Singapore, he shuttles between two locations at the city’s Windsor Nature Park. At…
Technology makes studying wildlife easier, but access isn’t equal
Studying primates in the wild has historically been a tough task. Alexander Piel knows the challenges too well. Since 2005, the biological anthropologist has been studying primates in countries like…
‘Amped-up citizen science’ to save the world: Q&A with Conservation AI Hub’s Grant Hamilton
Conservation apps have emerged in recent years as an efficient and cost-effective way to get citizens to monitor and document wildlife across the world. But an Australian initiative is going…
Where satellites come up short, drones can fill in a picture of our oceans
How do you keep an eye on the expansive ocean? You could hop on a boat and get really close to the water. You could do it from tens of…
Researchers turn to drones for that big-picture view of the forest canopy
Tropical forests across the world are hurting. Climate change is intensifying drought and wildfires worldwide, and deforestation continues to challenge conservation efforts to save intact forests. This means scientists need…
For fire-ravaged northern Thailand, there’s now an app to battle the blaze
The fire season in Chiang Rai, Thailand’s northernmost province, lasts from February to April every year. During these months, dry weather causes ordinarily green vegetation to turn dry and flammable.…
Drone photography raises concerns for Sri Lanka’s flamingo flock
MANNAR, Sri Lanka — With reddish-pink, brushstroke-like smudges on its wings, legs and large downward-curved beak, the greater flamingo is a stunning bird to watch, particularly in flight as part…
Collaboration is key to scaling conservation technologies (commentary)
Threats to wildlife and wild places abound. Waters warming due to climate change threaten coral reefs more frequently and with greater intensity than ever before; the expansion of agriculture, infrastructure,…
Drones are a knife in the gunfight against poaching. But they’re leveling up
In 2016, during the height of the rhino poaching war, field rangers in Kruger National Park in South Africa saw sobering scenes day after day. The field reports showed just…
Swarm technology: Researchers experiment with drones to battle crop pests
In some places in North America, the sound of buzzing above fields and forests may no longer foretell trouble, but rather, an innovative solution to a centuries-old problem. Drones are…
Armed with data and smartphones, Amazon communities boost fight against deforestation
Teaching Indigenous communities in the Amazon to tap on remote-monitoring technologies during forest patrols can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found. Researchers, whose work was published July 12…
$10 million XPRIZE Rainforest contest announces 33 qualifying teams
A total of 33 teams spanning 16 countries from Brazil to India have been chosen to advance to the next stage of a five-year, $10 million competition aimed at preserving…
Canadian First Nation deploys ROV in push for stronger marine protection
When Sellemah was a girl, in the days when the Tl’ches archipelago was still inhabited, the tide pools were full of urchins. The Songhees Nation elder, who also goes by the…
Madagascar experiments with drones for its massive reforestation effort
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — To achieve its ambitious large-scale reforestation goals, Madagascar is turning to the sky. The country will use drones to plant trees in isolated areas. The plan is…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Narco airstrips beset Indigenous communities in Peruvian Amazon
- 15 illegal narco-trafficking airstrips found near Peru Indigenous communities
- Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
- Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
Oceans
- Peruvian fishers sue for additional compensation after big December oil spill
- Smuggling networks exploit migrant debt to fuel tiger poaching in Malaysia, study shows
- Community-based conservation cuts thresher shark fishing by 91% in Indonesia: Study
- With climate change, cryosphere melt scales up as a threat to planetary health
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Should mining companies consider no-go zones where isolated Indigenous peoples live? (Commentary)
- Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
Endangered Environmentalists
- Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities
- Environmental journalist in Cambodia shot and killed by suspected logger
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- An ‘ocean grab’ for a property megaproject leaves Jakarta fishers grounded
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
