Over the wetlands of Senegal, researcher Alexandre Delplanque pilots a drone to count waterbirds: pelicans, flamingos, and terns. He flies the drone, but AI analyzes the images to count individuals in a flock, speeding up analysis by thousands of hours per survey, he estimates. And time is of the essence.
Since 1970, wildlife populations have plummeted by over seventy percent. The world is in the throes of a biodiversity crisis and, according to some researchers, undergoing its sixth mass extinction. The planet has previously endured five mass extinction events, with the last ushering in the end of the Cretaceous period: the time of the infamous asteroid impact that unleashed a nuclear winter and killed the dinosaurs. That was sixty-six million years ago.
To rescue species from the brink of extinction, first you have to know what you have, and how many â which is often easier said than done, especially in fields with a lot to count. Scientists estimate less than 20 percent of insect species on Earth have been identified. After AI reviewed just a weekâs worth of camera trap footage in Panama, researchers say they found over 300 species previously unknown to science.
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