AI of tiger: Tiny camera protects people

PARIS

Tiger populations are on the rise in the jungles of India and Nepal and the predators are roaming ever closer to villages, sparking a race among conservationists to find ways of avoiding conflict.

They are increasingly finding solutions with artificial intelligence, a bunch of technologies designed to reason and make decisions like humans.

Experts from Clemson University in South Carolina and several NGOs published research last month on their work using AI-enabled cameras that they say could help revolutionize tiger conservation.

They placed tiny devices around enclosures in the two South Asian nations, both to protect villagers from the predators - and the predators from poachers.

According to their research, published in the BioScience journal, the camera system called TrailGuard can distinguish between tigers and other species and relay images to park rangers or villagers within seconds.

"We have to find ways for people and tigers and other wildlife to coexist," Eric Dinerstein, one of the authors of the report, told AFP.

"Technology can offer us a tremendous opportunity to achieve that goal very cheaply."

The research claims the cameras were immediately effective, picking up a tiger just 300 meters from a village, and on another occasion identifying a team of poachers.

They say their system was the first AI camera to identify and transmit a picture of a tiger, and it has almost wiped out false alarms - when traps are tripped by passing boars or falling leaves.

The scheme is one of several putting an AI spin on the established ideas of wildlife surveillance.

Researchers in Gabon are using AI to sift their camera trap images and are now trying a warning system for elephants.

Teams in the Amazon are piloting equipment that can detect the sounds of chainsaws, tractors and other machinery associated with deforestation.

And U.S. tech titan Google teamed up with researchers and NGOs four years ago to collect millions of images from camera traps.

The project, called Wildlife Insights, automates the process of identifying species and labelling images, saving many hours of laborious work for researchers.

Conservationists like Dinerstein, who also leads the tech team at the Resolve NGO, are sure that technology is helping their cause.

Their goal is to ensure that 30 percent of the Earth's land and oceans are designated protected zones by 2030, as agreed by dozens of governments last year, with that number eventually going up to 50 percent