WildMon helps measure the impact of conservation efforts in Indonesia
There is an urgent need to fill gaping data holes in the biodiversity and conservation ecosystem.
According to Chrissy Durkin, President and Chief Development Officer of WildMon, the data gap is massive. This is because the data is frequently biased, difficult to compare, and “locked away in hard-to-decipher scientific papers.” The areas most at risk from this are often the ones lacking the most critical data and support to enact crucial conservation projects.
The Nature Tech Collective sat down with WildMon to learn more about their efforts to overcome these challenges, focusing on a particular project in Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Who is WildMon?
WildMon is a new non-profit organization that emerged early in 2024. Though nascent as a company, they are already working on projects spanning the globe with a team composed of seasoned professionals who have been collaborating together for over a decade. WildMon’s professionals are united behind the need to achieve a singular vision: removing barriers for frontline conservationists working to deploy biodiversity monitoring technologies, and facilitating scale in the processing and analysis of data, regardless of background.
WildMon is also a global organization, with projects in Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Panama, Mali, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, United States, Belgium, Republic of Congo, and Uganda. Each project is equipped with an assortment of camera trapping, ecoacoustic, and eDNA technology depending on the project aims; each project targets locally led sustainable and long-term monitoring.
Introducing data pipelines for conservation efforts
Data pipelines automate the movement and transformation of data, making it easier for organizations to handle large volumes of information efficiently. WildMon’s vision includes the construction and maintenance of data pipelines that move raw data through analysis to final metrics, indicators, and reporting. These data pipelines help to streamline the conservation process and make it easier for stakeholders to take direct action based on the conclusions of the data.
WildMon supports biodiversity impact measurement in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
How it started
WildMon has partnered with Planet Indonesia, a local NGO that has been partnering and forming strong relationships with the indigenous Dayak communities around the Gunung Naning forests of Indonesia. There is a need to access conservation technologies to understand how the conservation efforts designed and implemented by the Dayak communities in collaboration with Planet Indonesia are impacting biodiversity presence, and to inform effective management of the forests surrounding the communities in the future.
The solution
The Dayak community’s needs were answered by an integrated suite of technologies, including acoustic monitoring and camera-trapping and satellite imagery courtesy of Planet Indonesia.
(Image Credits: Planet Indonesia)
The camera traps and recorders will be placed at 100 pre-selected sites over four sampling periods over the next two years. The data will then be analyzed using AI pipelines: the WildMon ecoacoustic platform for sound recordings, and Wildlife Insights for camera trapping.
Results will be displayed in the WildMon Insights data visualization dashboard so that partners can easily view the data through digestible tables, figures, and maps:
(Visual from the WildMon dashboard)
The resulting species detections and soundscape analyses will help to better understand ecosystem change, species distribution, and seasonal variation. The overlap of visual and audio methods will help the team to capture vocal species such as hornbills and gibbons, as well as less vocal species such as pangolins and wild pigs.
This project will specifically focus on 60 priority species, many of them endangered and protected, such as the Bornean orangutan, Sunda pangolin, Bornean white-bearded gibbon, and Helmeted Hornbill. By building AI models that can be used to analyze continued data collection, the work processes can be replicated by WildMon’s local partners with greater ease and allows WildMon to facilitate the long-term use of these technologies.
For on-going success, WildMon recognizes the critical need for local capacity-building and will carry on providing technical support to Planet Indonesia and the Dayak communities. The goal will center on ensuring their monitoring efforts are continued well into the future.
Next steps
This project will give the indigenous Dayak communities and Planet Indonesia a better understanding of how the ongoing holistic conservation approach, when collaboratively designed and implemented, and covering aspects from climate-smart agriculture, financial inclusion, health services, and obtaining land rights, impacts wildlife. The results from this project will also be used to identify highly-biodiverse areas that can inform the creation of new no-take core zones and limited-use areas. These areas connect conservation efforts across a vast 300,000 ha of Gunung Naning Protection forest that are managed and used by several of the Dayak communities.
The collaboration is currently in the planning phase, with final site selections and hardware shipments being put into place by the end-of-year. First deployments will start rolling out in January 2025, and the WildMon team is sure to keep providing learning insights from the field.
Follow their journey in Kalimantan on LinkedIn and connect with the teams via their respective websites at WildMon and Planet Indonesia.
Watch the webinar
The below video was recorded during a Nature Tech Collective NTC Now session: A weekly event for members to drop in to present time, exchange updates, and connect. We invite a special guest, provide a quick pulse on the collective including special announcements, followed by community led updates and activities.
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