WildTrack

Welcome to a Guest Blog with Marie Lemerle, a PhD student in South Africa, researching Brown hyena (Hyaena brunnea) on Namibia’s wild west coast. This...

It’s true, a recent article published by PNAS reported that Rodent biomass exceeds that of elephants! Rodents are not only numerous by species, but they...

Developing renewable energy capacity is a current focal point towards sustaining life on earth - not just human life but the lives of the other...

I was honoured to be one of the first guests for a new Podcast series hosted by Scott Miller, called ‘Creating a Cooler World’. I...

Out here in the northwest of South Africa the quiet is magnificent, and the sunset paints the whole sky in an incredible palette of colours...

By Hana Ryan Wilson, WildTrack.

If you want to know who is running around in the woods under your feet, try Track Plates!

As the world transitions from greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy, we can all look forward to the obvious benefits of a curb...

Thank you for using our mobile app! We’re excited to bring you our first update packed with useful features and important fixes. Here’s what’s new...

Our Annual Report 2022-3 is now available on our website

1. You’re an undergraduate engineering student at Olin College of Engineering in Boston, visiting the Botswana International University for Science and Technology! What’s the connection point?!...

1. As the founding father of biodiversity conservation and winner of every major international conservation award, you have made an astonishing contribution to the field....

How can I connect with the Earth on 22nd April?!

As part of our feature on small mammal monitoring, we interviewed colleague and WildTrack Specialist Group member Nida Al-Fulaij, Conservation Research Manager at the People’s...

Did you know that two groups of small mammals - the Rodentia (mice, beavers, squirrels) and Eulipotyphla (shrews, moles, hedgehogs) together contain nearly half of...

What exactly is a small mammal? The International Biological Programme has defined small mammals as species weighing up to 5 kg. The International Union for...

If there’s snow outside, and you’re wondering what to do, try some snow tracking! We’re excited to feature two expert trackers and colleagues: Jon Poppele...

A few weeks ago we published an article in Peer J - ‘Protecting endangered megafauna through AI analysis of drone images in a low-connectivity setting:...

In our last blog post, we showcased our most recent publication on otter monitoring.

Southeast Asia is home to several different species of endangered otter, but they are elusive - hard to find and harder to count. BUT… their...

How can we count rhinos quickly over large areas to protect them? I recently recorded a podcast for NVIDIA with colleague Alice Hua, a software...

Back before we founded WildTrack, we lived in Zimbabwe for 10 years tracking black rhino, and worked closely every day with expert indigenous trackers. Slowly...

WildTrack Specialist Group members Amy Fitzmaurice and Asaf Ben-David are presenting a unique art exhibition for our workshop in Portugal, October 30th - November 6th...

This week, in his excellent blog series, ConservationBytes, Australian Ecologist Corey Bradshaw discusses new attempts to resurrect the extinct Tasmanian tiger, or Thylacine, which was...

Our latest publication in the journal PeerJ describes how we’ve developed a model to protect rhino using drones. The drones fly overhead and collect video...

We were honoured to present WildTrack’s work to a wide-ranging audience from wildlife conservationists to government officials from around the world at this IUCN event...

As we emerge, slowly and unsteadily, from the thunderbolt of the first Pandemic, with more almost certain to come, it seems a good time to...

Conservationists now have a new prototype AI tool to help prevent rhinoceros poaching.

We report on the challenges we faced during an extraordinary year, and share our successes.

Kate Gilman-Williams is driven by a passion to protect animals. What marks her apart from most other 11 yr olds is her determination to communicate...

The United Nations Day for Biological Diversity 2021 is an opportunity to celebrate the work being done around the world to protect our fast-disappearing biodiversity....

The new WildTrack Specialist Group is an innovative global network of conservation biologists using only animal-friendly and community-accessible techniques to protect endangered species. This short...

The theme of the 2021 Women in Science Day is ‘Women Scientists at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19. Our majority-women WildTrack Core Group...

All over the world, bats – yes those same bats that pollinate our food, disperse seeds, eat bugs that annoy us – are in deep...

Guest Blog: WildCats in Iran – New tourism initiative to help conservation January 4, 2021 Nature tourism and wildlife conservation often work hand in hand...

We’re truly honoured to be recipients of the 2020 Association for Unmanned Vehicle Services International (AUVSI) XCELLENCE award in the Humanitarian category, for our work...

WildTrack, in collaboration with the UC Berkeley I School, has won the coveted Hal R. Varian Capstone award for the WildTrackAI Computer Vision application! WildTrack...

This paper focus specifically on the practical application of our footprint identification technique in JMP for monitoring at-risk black rhino populations in Namibia’s custodianship properties....

An almost perfect lion print - left hind foot - showing clear outlines of the four toe pads and heel.

This is a great story of how a zookeeper’s curiosity and expertise with jaguars helped her think like a professional tracker. Thanks to our friends...

Now you can view WildTrack’s TerraX documentary as a stand-alone sequence with English subtitles (Credit: Alexander Beck, JMP Germany)

WildTrack’s work in Namibia to monitor and protect black rhino, in partnership with Kuzikus Wildlife Reserve, is featured in a new documentary from German documentary...

“The AUVSI XCELLENCE Awards celebrate the achievements of individuals and organizations who have applied unmanned systems technology to create solutions to address a range of...

We’re happy to share our 2019 WildTrack Annual Report, detailing our work throughout 2019. We always welcome feedback, thoughts, suggestions and new ideas so please...

Building a strong user network is key to the success of any new technology. WildTrack’s Footprint Identification Technology is being used across five continents, but...

Honoured to be on this list, and proud to recognize our partners at JMP software, senseFly, the US Army Research Office, and BerkeleyISchool for the...

Neoichnology. The science of footprints. Footprints for wildlife conservation.

What led two rhino conservationists working in a remote area of Africa to discover a better way of keeping track of rhino? The answer is...

Can senseFly’s eBee X help us monitor rhino and other wildlife in Africa? We’re here in Namibia trialing this awesome drone using many different parameters...

The WildTrack team is in Namibia filming two techniques for monitoring black rhino; FIT in JMP software to identify individuals, and using senseFly eBee X...

This CFIT presentation was given to the Conservation Technology session at the September 2019 AZA Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

WildTrack is partnering with the US leading fixed-wing drone manufacturer senseFly{“target”:”_blank”} to explore the use of their excellent integrated drone mapping systems for wildlife monitoring....

Over the summer we’ve been trialing more efficient ways of collecting footprint images, making it easy for citizen scientists to participate in our work. We...

WildTrack has recorded prints in almost every kind of substrate you can imagine - sand, snow, mud, gravel, charcoal etc) but yesterday we received something...

Living with Tigers Project lead researcher Amy Fitzmaurice ran a successful training workshop for Nepal Tiger Trust (NTT) on WildTrack’s Footprint Identification Technique (FIT).

Check out our new WildTrack website! We showcase our academic and research work and bring our citizen science portal, ConservationFIT on board to streamline our...

WildTrack’s work in Namibia, documented on location by film-makers Ray and Susan Ellis of Footpath pictures , has just been honoured with two Emmy awards!...

Celebrate with WildTrack as we earn our first GuideStar Platinum status!

By Katrina Leser, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida

Pumas range over all the Americas - this species has one of the widest distributions of all those we study.

WildTrack teams led by Dr Peter Law in Namibia are monitoring black rhino for the Namibian government. We’re running pilots at three different locations (confidentiality...

Our team is in the field, at our first site, using a footprints-only protocol to estimate black rhino numbers for landowners and the Namibian Ministry...

Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment reports on our paper in Peer J demonstrating that FIT can be used to monitor tapir populations in the...

From Karin Schwartz, PhD, Scientific Coordinator for Ex-Situ Partners, ConservationFIT

We recently visited Namibia with Susan and Ray Ellis, founders of Footpath pictures. They produced a beautiful short film that relates how footprints produce biometrics...

With co-authors from Duke Kunshan University and the Chinese Center for Research and Conservation of the Giant Panda, we report on the use of footprints...

ConservationFIT is partnering with organisations that host ‘ambassador’ animals whose footprints can help us protect their free-ranging cousins. Oregon’s Wildlife Safari is helping us by...

We’ve been collecting data for this paper for the last three years - trudging up vertical slopes in the eastern Himalayas and poring over snowy...

Pandas are bears. Bears are, as we all know, omnivores. They’ll eat whatever comes their way, give or take. Pandas, however, have dedicated themselves to...

Larissa Slaney, our PhD student at Heriott Watt University, Edinburgh, interviewed for The National Scot on her project to keep cheetah FIT

Our PhD student Larissa Slaney, based at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh UK, is using FIT to investigate relatedness between cheetah. If the technique can be...

ConservationFIT helping track, preserve endangered species

Conservation Drones Help Protect Animals

We’re often asked, ‘Which is the most challenging species to ID from footprints?’.

We’re often asked if identifying animals from their footprints is analogous to identifying humans from fingerprints.Unfortunately, the answer is no! Animal footprints are much more...

It’s cold here in the Namibian winter mornings, and the cheetah are eager to help with deep learning, in return for a juicy steak treat....

Multi-award winning corporation NVIDIA is featuring our work today, World Environment Day, on their NVIDIA blog

ConservationFIT reported by WUNC public radio

Conservation FIT featured on Michigan Public Radio

AAAS Eurekalert features ConservationFIT

USING JUST A SMARTPHONE, CITIZEN SCIENTISTS CAN HELP TRACK ENDANGERED SPECIES

If you missed the presentation, here it is:

Our launch is featured at Duke News Online

https://youtu.be/f4sgMSRhPKM

EVENT to celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity

ConservationFIT is launching today, 22nd May 2017! Come and join us!

Today is Endangered Species Day!

Calling puma conservationists! Monitoring the puma is challenging; they are shy and elusive. We’ve just published a new, non-invasive approach using footprint identification:

We’re proud to be part of a new video documenting the wonderful work of the Pimm Lab at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke...

Our new WildTrack T-shirts are here! Get FIT with our T-shirts or customise for other products. Sprint like a cheetah, charge like a rhino, or...

[caption id=”attachment_140” align=”alignleft” width=”300”] Footprints of the species that we’ve worked with, including Bengal and Amur tiger, black and white rhino, hyena, cheetah, Baird’s and...

FIT is being used to identify otters in collaboration with the Suffolk-based Stanny Field Centre in the UK (http://www.stannyfarm.org/Field/otterProj.html). This Centre recently hosted the first...

We’ve always wanted to produce a detailed video showing would-be users, our field conservation colleagues, exactly how FIT works, step-by-step….

It’s our job as conservationists to celebrate the Earth and all her inhabitants, but today is special. Our Earth Day blog is published by JMP...

Business for Wildlife! We’re thrilled to have been chosen by SAS to feature in the new 2016 roundtable report ‘Create, Grow, Sustain’!

The Piedmont Wildlife Center (PWC) in Durham is encouraging citizen scientists to sign up and help monitor Box turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina)) in North Carolina,...

Technologies have so much to offer towards protecting global biodiversity, but only if they are appropriately deployed. Together with colleague Stuart Pimm, we comment on...

**How hard can it really be to count otters? Frederick Kistner, from the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany tells his story…. **

Take a look at where WildTrack techniques are being developed and used to provide better monitoring for endangered species!

How can we most effectively deploy technology for anti-poaching and human:wildlife conflict mitigation? It’s a matter of understanding local needs and capacities, integrating expert local...

The eastern or mountain bongo. IMHO the most gorgeous antelope in the world, critically endangered and found wild only in one remote region of Kenya....

Transferring technology to users on the ground is vital for conservation success. We’re just back from running our second international FIT workshop for cheetah, at...

Our WildTrack home page (wildtrack.org) now features a PayPal ‘Donate’ button. It’s easy to make a donation, and every cent really does count, so please...

The GuideStar Exchange (guidestar.org) revolutionizes philanthropy by providing information that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving.

Check out our new web page! With JMP data visualisation software at our core, together we form a transformative multi-disciplinary group, working towards a common...

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7013288&isnumber=7013258

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tiger swims into China and dines out at Chinese chicken farm. Where is she now?

FIT brings bushman skills and JMP software together - it’s now easy to spot cheetahs! Read about our upcoming collaboration with the Naankuse Conservation Foundation...

Why we embraced footprints…. and where we go from here!

The iconic and beautiful mountain lion (cougar) ranges widely across the Americas, but population estimates are often unreliable. In Texas, where unregulated hunting still exists,...

While in Beijing we were interviewed by a group of very incisive IT journalists. They grilled us, and our host Bryan Yan from JMP China,...

China often gets a bad rap in the west on conservation issues. But on our recent visit we were struck by impressive new initiatives. First...

How captive giant pandas are helping their wild counterparts. Our super-effiicient Chinese colleagues have already started collecting panda footprints from the Ya’an centre near Chengdu....

China blog 7: Many giant panda experts told us it would be impossible to get good panda footprints in the wild….either because of deep leaf...

China blog 6

China blog 4: Finally we got to see Panda footprints in the snow!

Blog from China: 2

Under blue skies and walking on sheet ice I boldly went tracking the Amur tiger with colleague Prof. Dr Guangshun Jiang, Executive Director of the...

Blog from China 1: China is implementing strict new measures against illegal poaching. A colleague in the Northeast Forestry University showed us

The Duke Robotics club at the Pratt School of Engineering contacted us recently to ask if we would like to collaborate to build a drone...

We’re honoured to have been selected, by the Duke University Africa Initiative, to develop a new course on non-invasive techniques for monitoring endangered species for...

Following the Tiger’s footprints? … see our Cat-Watch at National Geographic.

We’re working with Duke PhD student Alexandra Sutton, who reports here on her research - trying to ameliorate human-wildlife conflict in Kenya. Alexandra is hoping...

WildTrack with SAS volunteers and NC State electrical engineering group at Carolina Tiger Rescue on a hot day in June. We got lots of footprint...

Some years ago we worked at Otjiwa in Namibia, using footprints to monitor a population of white rhino. We published a paper on this population...

WildTrack has developed a non-invasive Footprint Identification Technique (FIT) which can identify endangered animals at the species, individual, age-class and sex levels. Animals have unique...