Cooperation:
The WWF and tech company Intel use artificial intelligence to help with the conservation of endangered Amur tigers.
The WWF and US tech company Intel form a partnership to use artificial intelligence to help with the conservation of endangered Amur tigers in China, Wang Kaihao reports in Changchun, Jilin province
Nature and technology are often thought to be polar opposites, but the launch of a new wildlife project in China has shown that this is just a false dichotomy.
On Global Tiger Day on July 29, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and US technology company Intel signed an agreement in Changchun, the capital of northeastern China’s Jilin province, to use artificial intelligence technology to monitor and protect the country’s wild Amur tigers, which are also known to the locals as Northeast tigers.
The Amur tiger, the largest of all wild cat species in the world, used to be found in many places across northeastern China. However, increasing human activity in the region has resulted in a loss of tiger habitats and subsequently, a decline in its population, according to Liu Peiqi, the head of the WWF’s Northeast China program.
As it is rare to see tigers in the forest — Liu has not witnessed one since he started his career in wildlife protection in the 1980s — WWF researchers have to rely on infrared cameras to determine their whereabouts. There are presently about 1,200 cameras set up in the Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces where tiger activity is thought to be likely.
According to the researchers, about 47 individual wild Amur tigers were detected in China between 2013 and 2017, including nine reproductive families and 16 cubs. Liu noted that the numbers are estimates because traditional tracking methods are fraught with technical limitations.
“It’s not like counting tigers in enclosed zoos. We used to analyze footprints and identify different tigers based on their size and stripes. But this procedure is very energy-consuming as we have to compare the myriad pictures one by one,” says Liu.
“Some cubs grow faster than others and some pictures we have are not clear enough for us to tell whether it is a new subject. A large part of data we have collected is thus redundant.”
AI technology is expected to lend researchers a helping hand in this matter. According to the new agreement, the WWF and Intel will explore a model of sustainable development in wildlife conservation which aims to overcome the limitations of traditional field monitoring, such as the manual collection of data, the long processing and identification process, the inability to obtain important data in a timely manner and the restoration of fuzzy images.
“The protection of tigers is a combination of natural sciences, sociology and economics. We expect AI technology to be used in big data analysis of more fields and offer more references in policy-making and the roles we can play,” says Liu.
Alyson Griffin, Intel’s vice-president of global marketing, says that the company’s technology would be able to enhance the challenging and tedious process of gathering information on the tigers.
“At the front end, the Intel Movidius-based infrared camera will be set up using motion detection to trigger data capture for an always-on sys- tem. This will generate a higher volume of more reliable data and reduce the need for collection labor,” she explains.
Movidius, a California-based company, is known for its leading vision processing unit. It was acquired by Intel in 2016. Griffin adds that AI algorithm and data analysis at the back end would scan and analyze images from hundreds of cameras, tracing the path of the Amur tigers from multiple dimensions.
“I’m still very excited about the future of technology. Some people are afraid of artificial intelligence for many reasons, like how jobs might be lost. But, when we do a program like this, it’s a technology for good,” she says.
“The enormous value of AI technology is best demonstrated by its proven ability, through constantly expanding applications, to solving major challenges regarding human development and social progress.”
During the St Petersburg Tiger Summit in 2010, heads of states and senior government representatives of tiger range countries agreed to the goal of doubling the world’s wild tiger population by 2022, the next Year of Tiger according to the Chinese zodiac.
The global population of tigers has been growing since the summit. In 2016, the WWF estimated that there were about 3,890 wild tigers around the world, 21.6 percent more than the number in 2010. There was more good news last year too — as many as 24 Amur tigers were detected by cameras in China, the highest number since the WWF launched its conservation program on the country’s tigers in 2006.
As part of its efforts to achieve the global goal, the WWF and the Chinese government have been using innovative approaches to effectively manage and conserve the wild tigers and their habitats.
In August 2017, the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park, China’s second national park after the Sanjiangyuan on the QinghaiTibet Plateau, was established, covering 14,900 square kilometers (71 percent in Jilin and 29 percent in Heilongjiang).
According to Zhang Shanning, deputy director of administration of the national park, rangers patrol the park daily to deter poaching activities. AI technology could play a part in this as it could be used to track suspicious people who enter the national park.
The technology could also help with the restoration of habitats as it allows researchers to determine the corridor through which Amur tigers move. Liu estimates that the national park only has enough habitats to support between 20 and 40 tigers. In contrast, there were 526 Amur tigers, including cubs, across the border in Russia in 2016, according to estimates. Liu says this is because there are more complete and larger habitats in Russia.
Constructing habitats is an important step in the conservation process, says Meng Xianlin, executive director general of China’s national management office of the endangered species of wild fauna and flora. He points out that 95 percent of tiger habitats in the world have disappeared over the past century.
“Diminishing habitats for large cat species is a global problem. The tiger crisis indicates that the environment they live in is not ideal enough. It also means there is a crisis in the eco-system,” says Meng.
“To protect the tigers, we need to develop their concomitant species as well as offer a complete food chain. We also need to improve the lives of the local people as this would decrease the conflicts between humans and animals.”
Intel’s AI technology has in recent years been used to track polar bear activity and research how whale blows could reflect the state of the ocean environment.
Griffin states that different AI algorithm would be tailored for each program, and if the project in China works well, it could be slightly modified to suit similar research efforts in other parts of the world.