After months of fasting as she traveled hundreds of kilometers across the ocean, a female loggerhead sea turtle hauls herself up onto the sand: the shoreline she has returned to…
Using drones for wildlife surveys isn’t new to marine wildlife research, but it’s been focused mainly on detecting the large mammals and sea turtles that break the ocean’s surface to…
Flor Rumayna and Sara Hurtado arrived in Lima this past August from their homes in the Amazon headwaters to learn more about aerial monitoring of forests. They’d been researching new technologies…
Technology users and tech developers don’t always talk directly to each other, but they should. The relatively small size of the scientific/conservation community and its need for a particular suite…
Forest monitoring has experienced a revolution in recent years, with vast improvements in satellite sensors, the emergence of drones, and growing ubiquity of on-the-ground technologies like smartphones and camera traps.…
The non-profit Conservation X Labs (CXL) recently announced twenty finalists for the Con X Tech Prize – subtitled “Hacking Extinction.” The finalists will receive $3,500 to continue developing their projects,…
The survey looked easy on paper. All they had to do was to go the Babai Valley in western Nepal and fly a drone (or unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV) along…
MEDELLIN, Colombia — Keeping an eye on what is going on out in the vast countryside of Colombia’s palm oil plantations is a challenge. But that may be about to…
The most popular stories last week from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, followed farmed salmon escapes in Chile, a new biosphere reserve in Ecuador, and high-tech forest monitoring in Peru. Patagonia’s…
The Brazilian government used a drone to help confirm the presence of an uncontacted indigenous group deep in the Amazon rainforest. FUNAI, Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, undertook an expedition to…
The Great Elephant Census, conducted in 2014 and 2015, counted more than 350,000* elephants across 18 African countries. Human observers in small planes flew some 294,000 kilometers during more than 1,500…
On this episode of the podcast we discuss the increasing use of drones by wildlife lovers, researchers, and businesses, how that might be stressing animals out, and how drone hobbyists…
Last month, Seattle Audubon hosted a panel discussion featuring Mongabay staff and colleagues about the ever-growing applications of technology for conservation. Mongabay Founder and CEO Rhett A. Butler moderated the…
An unlikely group of experts have teamed up to apply software developed to find distant stars to help solve problems in conservation ecology. The “astro-ecology” project at Liverpool Johns Moores…
LONG LAMAI, Malaysia — The tallest tajem trees have slash marks clear up to the canopy. Each diagonal cut released some of the tree’s heart-stopping sap to tip someone’s darts,…
Scientists have discovered a 'supercolony' of Adélie penguins in Antarctica's remote Danger Islands, raising hopes that the bird's population isn't declining as rapidly as previously thought. The discovery, which is…
Scientists in Antarctica recently tested a novel technique to measure the body size and mass of wildlife — aerial photography. The method, used on leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx), allows scientists…
Tens of thousands of indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon have been fighting decades of contamination of their natural resources by foreign and domestic oil companies. Oil spills, leaky pipelines,…
Why are scientists turning to aerial images to monitor the health of ecosystems found beneath the ocean’s surface? Coral reefs support millions of species ranging from single-celled algae to sharks…
Jarrod Hodgson is one of very few scientists who have used rubber ducks as part of their Ph.D. research. Hodgson and colleagues at the University of Adelaide compared the accuracy…
Technology is changing how we investigate and protect planet Earth. The increased portability and reduced cost of data collection and synthesis tools, for instance — from visual and acoustic sensors…
A pair of drones and the efforts of nearly 3,000 volunteers have helped scientists carry out a detailed study of the trees within a 400-hectare (1,000-acre) patch of the Amazon,…
Steven Kotler is a leading thinker on how technology can be employed to halt the global loss of biodiversity. Recently the prolific author and journalist convened a weekend forum for…
In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have increasingly been used to monitor wildlife populations from above, but artificial intelligence has taken drone technology one step further. Koala populations are…
The Ugalla Primate Project uses several types of drones to map the movement patterns of western Tanzania’s elusive Issa Valley chimpanzees.
Drones will now hover above Australian coastal waters in a bid to reduce shark attacks, Australian government announced this week. The first drone trial began at Coffs Harbor in the…
On the week of October 9th, a 10-man ranger patrol team was ambushed by wildlife poachers equipped with heavy artillery as they searched for an elephant tracking collar in Garamba…
Some key findings from a recent technology meeting identifying challenges and opportunities for applying new technologies to monitoring forests and preventing illegal logging.
Using sophisticated software to analyze images from drone-mounted cameras could provide cheap, timely and detailed information on tree growth, seasonal forest dynamics and other key metrics.
A specialized drone called the hexacopter has captured thousands of striking high-resolution images of endangered killer whale (Orcinus orca) populations in the United States. The images have revealed that some whales…
