Conserving Biodiversity with Artificial Intelligence

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) for biodiversity conservation can help prevent the extinction of plants and animals and thus maintain a stable ecosystem.

The extinction of plants and animals such as Rhynia, Pluchea Glutinosa, Dodo, Great Auk, Tasmanian Tiger, and Western Black Rhinoceros in recent years is a matter of great concern since it adversely affects our ecosystem. Every species of plants and animals is important. Why? The existence of both plants and animals has always been vital to humans. Extinction of organisms disrupts the food chain and hence affects the ecosystem. Therefore, humans are very much dependent on plants and animals for survival. Hence precautionary measures should be taken to maintain the stability of the ecosystem. The traditional biodiversity conservation methods have not shown much impact lately. Thus, the use of technology such as ML or AI for biodiversity conservation can help prevent further extinction of plants and animals.

Using AI for Biodiversity Conservation

The use of AI can help prevent the extinction of endangered plants and animals. Let's see how AI can be used for biodiversity conservation:

AI for Animal Conservation

With the recent development of AI-powered devices for the conservation of animals, we can now prevent wildlife extinction. After the extinction of western African rhinoceros, African elephants are next on the verge of going extinct due to the involvement of extensive poaching. According to a report by HuffPost, African elephants may be extinct by the year 2020. Due to this reason, an American multinational corporation and technology company has taken a step forward to stop poachers attack African elephants. The company has come with an AI-based technology security system that promotes anti-poaching. The AI-based technology system uses a camera that detects poachers planning to attack an animal and subsequently generates an alert to the park rangers in real time. According to the Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation, one elephant is killed every 15 minutes due to illegal hunting. Hence, this AI-based system can prevent illegal hunting of animals to a great extent. The AI-based system uses a vision processor with neural network algorithms to detects an object and classify images inside the camera. According to the company that has invested in this technology the AI-based system has helped cut down poaching at Serengeti National Park in Africa. The AI-based system has detected members from over 20 different poaching gangs within the first 15 months of its installation. Similarly, a number of such AI-based devices are manufactured by technology companies that can greatly help in animal conservation.

AI for Plant Conservation

Plants are very beneficial for human lives and greatly help in fulfilling our necessities. They help fulfill our basic necessities as they can provide us with food, shelter, and medicine. The more the number of trees present in an environment, the greater is the amount of oxygen produced. Hence, plants greatly help in maintaining the stability of the ecosystem. Based on a report by Mongabay, according to scientists, one in every five plant species are on the verge of being extinct. This clearly implies how important it is to conserve plants.

The California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic Society have jointly developed an AI-based networking platform that can help in the conservation of plants globally. The AI-based platform allows its users to click and share photos of various species of plants in real time. It also allows the other community members to identify the photos of the specific plant and confirm the plant's presence, whether if such a plant already exists. In this way, the AI-based networking platform can help discover new species of plants worldwide. This technology has proved to be a sigh of relief for scientists. It used to take hundreds of years by scientists for the collection of data about various types of plants and their existence. Now, with the help of this AI-based platform, scientists can collect data much effectively and on a large scale, and thus they can suggest measures to prevent the extinction of plants.