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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 17, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018 Conservationists use AI and big data to aid wildlife Tech is giving conservation a makeover By JOSEPH WINTERS Oregon Public Broadcasting Give Jason Holmberg 10,000 zebra photos and he’ll find the specific individual zebra you’re looking for, no problem. “It could take two min- utes,” he said. Holmberg won’t personally sort through the photos — it’s his software that will. Holm- berg is executive director of the nonprofit Wild Me. The Portland-based organization has developed a digital tool called Wildbook that uses arti- ficial intelligence and machine learning to expedite wild- life identification. In tandem with citizen science, Wild- book is able to condense years of human work — like photo- graphing thousands of animals and identifying each by hand — into a matter of weeks. In research and in daily life, AI is rapidly changing the way things work. With some savvy software engineering, comput- ers can learn to carry out com- plex, tedious tasks — whether it’s detecting cancer cells, operating driverless race cars or analyzing hockey plays. And as Wildbook shows, AI is giving conservation a make- over, too. “It blows human efforts out of the water,” Holmberg said. For example, in 2016 researchers in Kenya orga- nized a two-day event in which volunteers drove over prescribed regions of the country, taking pictures of all the zebras they could find. The team of over 350 scien- tists, government officials, park rangers and community members collected more than 40,000 photos in total. “It would be impossible for a research team to take all those photos, let alone analyze them,” said professor Chuck Stewart, head of the computer science department at New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Instead, citizen scientists were enlisted for data col- lection and Wildbook’s AI algorithms helped research- ers identify every zebra in just a few weeks. The Ken- yan government even recog- nized the results of the study as the country’s official zebra census. For each photo submitted to the system, Wildbook scans the image for signs of wild- life, filtering out background data like trees and brush. Then another algorithm steps in to identify not only the ani- mal’s species but its individ- ual identity. “Rather than just ‘this is a humpback whale,’ it says ‘this is Willy the humpback whale,’” Stewart explained. Wildbook can do this because many animals have unique markings that distin- guish them from other mem- bers of their species, “like a bar code,” explained Dan Ruben- stein, professor of zoology and program director of environ- mental studies at Princeton. For zebras, it’s their stripes. With whales, it’s the curvature on the edge of their fins. Soon, researchers hope to iden- tify elephants by the shape of their ears, which flicker before they charge, or even primates, which may be identifiable with facial recognition technology. Accuracy? As for the accuracy of these automated IDs? For some projects, “it gets it right about 99 percent of the time,” said Rubenstein, who tests the soft- ware in his field work on Ken- yan zebra populations. He also provides ecology and biol- ogy guidance to the Wildbook team. The population data created with Wildbook’s help can be used for much more than a cen- sus. At Oregon State Universi- ty’s Marine Mammal Institute, professor Scott Baker uses the software to understand hump- back whale migrations in the South Pacific. Other research- ers have used it to learn about risk mitigation behavior in giraffes. But most importantly, Wild- book is a tool for conservation. By encouraging citizen par- ticipation and with the speed of AI-driven data processing, Holmberg hopes to quicken the creation and evaluation of conservation strategies. The arrival of tools like Wildbook comes at time of growing concern for global biodiversity. In March, a United Nations panel released a collection of reports finding that plant and animal species in every part of the world were under severe threat. By some estimates, as many as 200 spe- Simon J. Pierce A whale shark. Big data and AI allow scientists to rapidly comb through thousands of photos and identify individuals using the skin patterning behind the gills and any scars they might have. cies are lost each year. Some have gone so far as to say that we are witnessing Earth’s most devastating extinction event since the end of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Researchers are calling for a collaborative effort to protect biodiversity. “From accountants to IT developers and machine learn- ing experts, all of these are desperately needed to ele- vate wildlife conservation to the 21st century,” said Wild Me software engineer Drew Blount. This includes citizen scien- tists, as well. For researchers and AI software developers, smartphone cameras represent data-collection game-chang- ers. And a platform like Wild- book can make submitting data easy and accessible. Partnerships with tech giants can offer conservation-minded nonprofits the resources to grow beyond their limited means. The Rainforest Connec- tion, for example, uses Goo- gle’s Tensorflow technology to monitor the Amazon Rainfor- est, listening in for signs of ille- gal chainsaw activity. A similar opportunity mate- rialized for Wildbook this June when Microsoft announced it would back the nonprofit as ‘Informatics revolution’ In the future, Holmberg and his colleagues hope that AI and machine learning will continue to ease human researchers from the burden of tedious tasks. One exam- ple is the whale shark You- Tube scanner, which scours the web for relevant videos of whale shark sightings. Every 24 hours the soft- ware finds videos titled or tagged “whale shark,” down- loads them, reads the descrip- tion, and uses machine Wild Me learning to identify which The Portland-based nonprofit Wild Me has developed a individual whale shark (if tool called Wildbook. It uses artificial intelligence to iden- any) appears in the video. The tify individuals in a species. software can even use geolo- cation information to disre- part of its AI for Earth pro- way to digest hundreds of gard videos shot in an aquar- gram. By providing access to thousands of images,” Ruben- ium and ask real YouTubers more expansive cloud com- stein explained. for more information by post- puting and AI resources, the But Microsoft’s cloud ing a comment. partnership will help make capabilities will allow data to It sounds like the stuff of Wildbook more accessi- be compartmentalized. Instead the future, but the technol- ble to researchers and citizen of haphazard organization on ogy is already being deployed. scientists. isolated computers, data will “It’s what we might call an informatics revolution,” said “It’s gonna be huge,” said be stored online. Rubenstein. In addition to improving Baker. He and fellow research- Before AI for Earth, images data management, the Wild Me ers, conservationists, and citi- submitted to Wildbook had to team also plans to use AI for zen scientists are hopeful that bounce between imaging soft- Earth’s support to give Wild- by making data more acces- ware and database software, book a facelift. An improved sible and interpretable, Wild- from algorithm to algorithm, user interface will keep users book can help solve — or at as part of the cataloging pro- engaged and eager to continue least mitigate — the biodiver- cess. “That’s not an efficient submitting photos. sity crisis. Group sues to expand orca habitat Whales are endangered By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press SEATTLE — An envi- ronmental group sued Presi- dent Donald Trump’s admin- istration Thursday to make officials move more quickly to protect the Pacific North- west’s endangered orcas. The recent grieving of one whale for her dead calf and scientists’ extraordi- nary attempts to save another from starvation highlight the urgency of their plight, the Tucson, Arizona-based Cen- ter for Biological Diversity said as it filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Seattle. There are just 75 orcas remaining in the Pacific North- west population, the lowest number in 34 years. They’re struggling with a dearth of Chi- nook salmon, their preferred prey, as well as toxic contam- ination and vessel noise. MILK FEST! Tue., Aug. 21st, 3-7pm Enjoy hay rides, milking contest, and more! Milk Fest attendees receive a discount coupon to book an upcoming event at our Venue Little Island Creamery 448 E. Little Island Rd. Cathlamet, WA 360-849-9456 The lawsuit says the National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to act on the center’s 2014 petition to expand habitat protections to the orcas’ foraging and migration areas off the coasts of Washington state, Ore- gon and California — even though the agency agreed in 2015 that such a move was necessary. The center says the protec- tions would help reduce water pollution and restrict vessel traffic that can interfere with the animals. “Time is running out fast for these magnificent, intelligent orcas,” Cather- ine Kilduff, an attorney with the organization, said in an emailed statement. “It’s heart- breaking to watch them starv- ing to death and mourning their dead calves. Every day that Trump’s people delay action is a step toward extinc- tion for these whales.” The three orca pods that make up the so-called south- ern resident population have not successfully reproduced since 2015. 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