Hello to the readers and members of the Grove Forum!
This is the second Grove update from Technology for Wildlife Foundation.
1) Overall updates
We welcomed a new member to the Foundation’s team in June 2022. Our current core team of five comprises two conservation cartographers, a conservation communicator, a programme manager and the director. In this phase of the post-pandemic era, our team has transitioned from fully remote to a hybrid model in Panjim, Goa. We meet to work together as required, and work from home, cafes or co-working spaces otherwise. While we are currently looking for a permanent office space in Panjim, we will continue working in this hybrid mode for the near future.
Two of our team were selected to attend fellowships and workshops during the monsoon, when most of our fieldwork was restricted. Nandini Mehrotra, our programme manager, was in Bellingham, Washington, U.S. as a Kinship Conservation Fellow, while Nancy Alice, our conservation communicator, attended the Bangalore Science Gallery’s Carbon School.
In August, we met the Mongabay-India team in person when they visited Goa, and had a full-day meeting with them regarding our collaboration on conservation cartography.
In September, once everyone returned to Panjim, we had a two-day in-person meeting; on the first day, we recapped each team members’ work and experience over the summer, and on the second, we discussed carbon, carbon markets and carbon-centric spatial analysis with Nisha D’Souza from EcoNiche sitting in.
Also in September, TfW was invited to co-lead India Flying Labs, and is currently the nodal organisation for any Indian UAV/conservation project that arises from the network. In practice, this gives us more visibility, and more access to projects of the type that we specialise in.
After a year of experience, we’ve locked in our operational technology stack for the foreseeable future. Our primary tools are GSuite, Asana and Slack for day-to-day operations, and RazorpayX for pPayroll & HR. Via Razorpay and Plum, we have comprehensive group health insurance for all full-time staff.
2) Progress on the goals listed while on-boarding
Our current on-going independent initiatives are (a) the Clearance Mapper, (b) the use of UAVs for Conservation in India, (c) the Ghost Gear Technology Project and (d) the Reimagining Coasts Initiative (a joint venture with Eco-Niche). A new addition to this list is (e) a QGIS plugin to help plan conservation-related UAV mapping missions. We’ve also summarised a set of our other activities under f) Minor on-going projects and outreach.
a) Clearance Mapper Project
In August 2022, from an outreach perspective, we authored an article in Sanctuary Asia on PARIVESH, along with advantages and disadvantages of the portal.
Regarding constructing the clearance mapper tool itself, we spoke to various lawyers and understood that unless the data hosted on PARIVESH was released under an open–source licence, we would incur significant risk by making the data itself available to the general public. However, we use the tools we’ve built as required by our projects, and are working towards making the code that underpins these tools publicly available.
b) UAVs for Conservation in India
We are preparing a report that documents the use of UAVs for conservation in India. Our current collaborator on this project is Shivali Pai, a researcher at the Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. Together, we have interviewed conservation practitioners and UAV operators across the country, and will be conducting more interviews over the next few weeks. Our goal is to have Volume 1 of this report published early next year. Our planned Volume 2 will extend to UAV operations across South Asia, South-East Asia and Africa.
c) Ghost Gear Technology Project
Our paper on the use of technology to find and identify ghost gear has been updated; it now lists more types of technology and is applicable globally. It is now applicable globally, and comprehensively covers the various types of technology available. The draft is currently in the final stage, after which we will submit it for peer-review and eventual publication. Our collaborator on this project is Dr. Meredith Palmer, a conservation technology specialist with Fauna and Flora International (FFI).
d) Reimagining Coasts Initiative
In May, we made a field trip to Raigad, Maharashtra with Farmers for Forests (F4F), a fellow Rainmatter grantee, to assess mangrove restoration sites. We deployed UAVs to scout for potential sites, and collect data that would support decision-making on whether particular sites could host viable sites.
We’ve also been working towards understanding the mangrove/carbon space, from both the research and the market perspectives. We’ve spoken to numerous actors in this space, and are in the process of actively developing projects that will assist with mangrove conservation and restoration across India.
e) Open-source UAV mapping plugin
We’ve created the first version of an open source QGIS plugin that streamlines the production of UAV mapping missions. This combines some of our previous work on a drone image calculator, along with some geospatial operations, and is now publicly available in the QGIS plugin repository.
f) Minor on-going projects and outreach.
- We maintain a Pinterest board (https://pin.it/4DWD1gP) where our work on conservation cartography is publicly available.
- We continue to write on our processes and projects on our organisation blog.
- We produced and play-tested a game depicting the spatial components of human-elephant conflict at ATREE’s 25th Anniversary event.
- We continue to present our work using technology for conservation at webinars and in live seminars.
(i) On conservation cartography in Goa and on our spatial analysis-support for the #SaveMollem campaign at the Liberty & Light Festival in Goa (May 2022).
(ii) On informing and amplifying use of tech in conservation webinar hosted by the Rainmatter Foundation (June 2022).
(iii) On the use of technology in conservation practice and innovation at the Engineering for Change (E4C) webinar (October 2022).
(iv) We’ll be participating in a panel discussion at the Wildscreen Festival in Bangalore on the 22nd of October 2022.
3) Any challenges
We were unable to execute our joint project in Odisha with WWF-India and Dakshin Foundation, on the use of UAVs for Olive ridley turtle conservation, as the Odisha Forest Department did not issue the necessary approvals. We’ll attempt this project again in the next field season.
Regulatory compliance continues to be an administrative burden. We recently switched accountants/auditors, and in combination with Razorpay’s tools, this has reduced the time and effort required for administrative activities.
4) Any new avenues of collaboration (with other Grantees of RCF or other NPO/NGO)
In June, we ran an ODK capacity building workshop for a Sanctuary Asia’s Mud on Boots grantee working on sacred grove conservation. We also produced a map of global killer whale distribution that for Current Conservation, published in Issue 16.2 in August 2022.
In July, in collaboration with researchers from Florida International University, we prepared a map describing the location where a sleeper shark discovered in the western Caribbean. This research paper, including our map, was published in Marine Biology.
In August, The Habitats Trust (THT) and TfW undertook a field trip to Pondicherry to test the usability of ROVs for the survey and data acquisition on coral reefs on Indian coasts.
In September, we used UAVs to map a lake in Bangalore, followed by an online discussion on the use of of UAVs for lake conservation in Bangalore, for Paani.Earth. We also created maps for the Goa Foundation that depict the highway expansion through Mollem National Park; these were submitted in court.
In October, we conducted high-altitude UAV mapping missions in Ladakh in collaboration with IISER-Tirupati’s Scuirid Lab. The objective of this project was to assess whether UAVs could effectively map the habitat and population distribution of marmots and pikas. This is an on-going collaboration. We provided WWF-India with remote support regarding the use of drones in Bihar, to help them locate a designated man-eating tiger.
We have an on-going collaboration with IISER-Bhopal on the use of computer vision for wildlife detection in UAV imagery and video. Our on-going collaboration with Mongabay-India on conservation cartography continues, as does our work with the Wildlife Conservation Trust on dolphin and gharial conservation.
We’ve been in discussions with Fields of View regarding the production of games that help build public awareness regarding conservation trade-offs, and are at the project design stage currently.
5) Highlights from the initiatives being undertaken as part of your organisation
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has stayed all further construction on the road connecting to Honnavar Port in Uttara Kannada. Mongabay-India’s three-part investigative reporting of environmental norms & the community rights being ignored for the project. TfW contributed to the stories by visualising the areas of impact and misattribution; we’ve been privately informed that our maps were very useful in court.
The Supreme Court’s decisions in April and May on the linear infrastructure projects through Mollem National Park validated our work with the Goa Foundation and the SaveMollem campaign.
Our work using Planet satellite data for monitoring land use change near coastal mangrove and forest ecosystems under the NICFI Program was mentioned on global advancements in science and protected forests.
6) Outcomes you are chasing for the next 6 months (these can remain the same if unchanged since the last update)
We aim to complete our Ghost Gear and Use of UAVs for Conservation projects in the next few weeks. We have usable tools in place for our Clearance Mapper project; as our understanding of the risk environment improves, we will aim to make these tools publicly available. We’ve successfully completed the marmot/pika surveys in Ladakh, and hope to be able to conduct our planned turtle surveys in Odisha in the next 6 months.
7) KPIs (please use this section to let us know of the impact and reach of your work since the last update)
Since our last update, we have new collaborators and projects, as well as many more in development. We plan to conduct an impact assessment of our work over the next year, which we will share in a subsequent update.
8) Can Rainmatter be of help with anything at all
We are now attempting to create a cloud-based media library, that will host all our media in an accessible format. The tech-solution here seems to be to use Amazon Web Services, and Rainmatter’s technical guidance would be useful in this regard.
9) Any additional details you would like to provide
We blog extensively about our work and are also very active on both Twitter and Instagram (@techforwildlife).
10) Please also share any images or videos that you have documented as part of your work
Underwater footage from our recent fieldwork off the coast of Pondicherry, using a remotely operated vehicle to explore deep marine wildlife habitats, is available on Twitter here: