The Economist, of all publications, draws attention to the need for better data around biodiversity conservation in a recent short article, “Extinct and unmourned.” In June the Zoological Society of London launched an online version of Scott’s books ["Red Lists" of endangered species]. It unpicks the existing global lists held in Morges and examines them [...]
The NYT ran a quick “novelties” story on smartphone applications for identifying species of trees by matching cameraphone images of leaves to a database of leaf shapes — Foliage Field Guides for Cellphones. I hope the EOL project is taking notes. Lightweight iPhone-type apps may be the quickest development path towards some exciting new citizen [...]
The EO Wilson-founded Encyclopedia of Life is sponsoring a conference on biodiversity informatics — the application of DNA barcoding, IT, and other forms of technology to the issues of biodiversity and taxonomy. E-Biosphere 09 brings together all of the major players involved in barcoding — this will be a great event for understanding the state [...]
January 11, 2009 – 9:21 pm
Pacific Wild is a conservation organization in Western Canada dedicated to protecting the Great Bear Rainforest region, which constitutes nearly 2/3 of British Columbia’s coastline and coastal forests stretching up toward Alaska. With their new project Pacific Wild Live, they are using innovative panoramic videocameras to document wildlife activity remotely — a great example of [...]
Readers of my last several posts may have noticed a strange obsession with wildlife and communications technology. I’m interested in how information technology — especially imagery and mapping tools — can and are being used in service of biology and conservation. I keep harping on cameras and charismatic megafauna, but truthfully that is only one [...]
Love this idea: Wildlife film-making outsourced to Indian…elephants? Nature documentary producer/director John Downer trained elephants in the jungles of Madhya Pradesh, India, to carry HD cameras while following tigers through the jungle. Looks like some pretty fascinating footage. The film, entitled Tiger – Spy in the Jungle, will be shown on BBC on March 30. [...]
[Image: via] Either we do know all the varieties of beings which people our planet, or we do not. If we do not know them all -— if Nature has still secrets in the deeps for us, nothing is more conformable to reason than to admit the existence of fishes, or cetaceans of other kinds, [...]
Wolverine outside of Truckee, California, 2008 The above photo has been making waves in the wildlife science and conservation communities, as it is the first confirmed sighting of a wolverine in the Sierra Nevada since 1922. Oregon State grad researcher Katie Moriarty set up the motion-sensor camera to track martens, another elusive and weasel-like species, [...]
February 13, 2008 – 12:17 am
Peter Kareiva, chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, has an article in Science that builds on an idea which biologist Dan Janzen outlined several years ago in a Long Now talk entitled “It’s All Gardening.” Janzen’s talk centered on the unusefulness of the concept of wilderness as geography free of human influence and argued for [...]
I love this story of a guy in Germany who mounted a cheap digital camera with a timer on his cat’s collar and has posted pictures of his cat’s adventures throughout the day. I hope this “street use” of off-the-shelf technology for novel purposes is getting some attention in the field biology world. There are [...]
