From Karin Schwartz, PhD, Scientific Coordinator for Ex-Situ Partners, ConservationFIT ConservationFIT Ex-Situ Update The ConservationFIT project was initiated in the summer of 2016 by WildTrack. FIT is a footprint identification technique that uses morphometrics from footprint images to provide identification of species, individual, sex and age-class from footprints alone. Each…
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 to help us protect endangered species. We describe the potential of deep learning to help process these data. With the help of local San trackers…
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 to monitor Giant panda in China. Li, Binbin V., Sky Alibhai, Zoe Jewell, Desheng Li, and Hemin Zhang. 2018/2. “Using Footprints to Identify and Sex Giant…
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 collecting prints from their cheetahs. Maddy Tweedt, a carnivore keeper there, recounts her team’s trials and tribulations in finding the ‘right kind of sand’ to…
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 prints during late nights. The result is this paper just published in Biological Conservation. It outlines what we hope will be a new approach, with…
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 a wholly different diet of just bamboo. I suppose it could be considered the panda paleo diet. Anyway, the long and the short of it is…
Larissa Slaney, our PhD student at Heriott Watt University, Edinburgh, interviewed for The National Scot on her project to keep cheetah FIT http://www.thenational.scot/news/15588082.Scottish_scientists_in_crucial_research_project_to_save_the_cheetah/
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 shown to work it will be many times less expensive than DNA-based methods. The BBC interviews Larissa here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05jmddq
ConservationFIT helping track, preserve endangered species Bob Buckley of The Buckley Report on ConservationFIT “Anywhere an animal leaves a footprint, we can start collecting that data on who’s who and where they are. Capturing the data is so simple: All you need is a smart phone”. Sky Alibhai, co-founder of WildTrack.
Conservation Drones Help Protect Animals
