The world is losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate and Australia is one of the hotspots of this disturbing development. About 30% of our mammal species are threatened by extinction and the number is steadily increasing. 

Are you concerned about this? 

Do you want to use your skills to help turn around this frightening trend?

Think AI researchers, IT specialist, and Engineers can’t help – Think again! 

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The Environmental Informatics Hub at Monash is starting a new student team for “Biological Earth Observation” to develop technological solutions and support for conservation action. This will be a truly interdisciplinary team bringing together students from AI, IT, and Engineering with Students in Biology, Ecology, and Conservation Science, and anyone from other disciplines who wants to contribute their skills to building and running such a team (e.g. project management, publicity, social media, etc).
We need you!

One of the biggest problems for effective conservation management is that we are missing the relevant data to make good, evidence-based decisions. More than a quarter of all invertebrate species on the IUCN red list (and about 20% overall) are classified as data deficient. Which species are where? What are their population sizes? How are their habitats shifting? How do bushfires and floods impact on animal populations? What is the impact of our management actions?

To get this data at scale, manual observation is being replaced with automated methods and increasingly AI to turn raw observations into data, including from

• remote sensing
• acoustic monitoring
• camera traps
• environmental DNA

But this technology is still in its infancy and we need to push its capabilities quickly to support conservation action now.

• make a meaningful contribution to solving pressing environmental issues 
• gain new technical skills; especially AI
• gain experience with interdisciplinary collaboration and team work 
• be trained in running real world projects
• make new friends that care as much as you do
• have lots of fun in the process
• spend time outdoors
• and even get credit (Ts&Cs apply)

We plan to start locally together with Museum Victoria, and Nillumbik Shire as initial partners (Think globally, act locally!). Other existing collaborations that the team can build on include Earth Care, Bush Heritage Australia, Nature Parks, and The Nature Conservancy. 

In the long run, we hope to work towards a collaboration with the word-wide biological observation networks. The sky’s the limit.

Becoming a founding member means you are driving the directions!