Pumas range over all the Americas – this species has one of the widest distributions of all those we study. A few weeks ago some innovative biologists, Alberto Slocker, Ismael Alvaro Barria Oyarzo, Elena Plana and Aintzane Cariñanos wrote to us describing the challenges they face monitoring pumas in the farthest…
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 maintained for security) using FIT and matching heel patterns to individuals for quick reference. Horseback monitoring can also allow our teams to cover more ground…
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 of Environment and Tourism.
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 Atlantic forest of Brazil, with co-authors Drs Danielle Moreira, Cristina da Cunha, Jardel Seibert and Andressa Gatti.
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…
