African forest and African savanna elephant populations are in severe decline. Monitoring them helps conservationists develop protection strategies, but doing so in dense tropical rainforests is a challenge. New artificial intelligence technology is eliminating that barrier.
A forest elephant mother and calf in Dzanga Bai, a forest clearing in Dzanga Sangha Protected Area, southwestern Central African Republic. (Image: Carlos Drews for WWF)
After decades of population decline due to ivory poaching and habitat loss, the African forest elephant and African savanna elephant are on the list of endangered and threatened animals . The African forest elephant population, in particular, fell by more than 86 percent over 31 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature , which runs the list.
Monitoring elephants helps conservationists develop more effective protection strategies that contribute to the long-term survival of these mammals. But that’s a severe challenge, especially in the Congo Basin of Central Africa, because the basin is a dense tropical rainforest ecosystem — unlike the African savanna, a grassland ecosystem with open spaces.
“A drone flying over the African savanna forest can identify the animals,” said Thomas Breuer, African forest elephant coordinator at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Germany. “But a drone flying over a dense canopy in the Congo won’t be able to see through the canopy, so we have to estimate the number of animals.”
The inability to accurately monitor elephant populations left conservationists relying on indirect methods.
“We estimate numbers by counting elephant dung piles in an area, knowing both how many piles an elephant produces daily and how long these piles remain visible,” Breuer said. “We also use camera traps because they help us create individual profiles of the animals. When we spot an elephant at one location and then again 50 kilometers away, we get insight into their movement patterns, which advances our understanding of these animals.”
To monitor elephants more effectively, IBM and WWF announced an initiative leveraging IBM’s Maximo Visual Inspection artificial intelligence (AI) technology to identify and monitor individual African forest elephants. The partnership addresses the need for precision and efficiency in tracking one of […]
IBM and WWF Collaborate to Save Elephants with Artificial Intelligence
