Automated Wildlife Detection and Remote Sensing

• Many wildlife species are cryptic by nature. While keeping a low profile can help wildlife avoid potential predators, this also makes it difficult for field biologists to monitor wildlife populations. Monitoring wildlife populations or their habitat conditions in person often requires repeated visits to multiple sites covering large study areas, imposing cost and logistical constraints on monitoring efforts. WEST scientists are active in pioneering new methods to detect and monitor wildlife and aspects of their environment using remote cameras, aerial or satellite imagery, environmental DNA, drones, passive acoustic recorders, and other field-deployed sensors. These solutions can increase the amount of information wildlife managers can gain with limited budgets and often shed light on previously unobserved or unobservable biological phenomena.

• Pattern-driven recognition is one of the most innovative and disruptive technologies of the last 20 years. While most pattern recognition tasks entail some element of human activity, WEST is one of the first firms to recognize the amazing utility of these technologies in wildlife applications. WEST is truly a worldwide leader in customizing neural network architectures to detectors and classifying wildlife in still and video photography.