Conservation 4.0 – Will robots take your job?

Wild nature and natural ecosystems are declining rapidly as humans use more of the earth’s resources and change climate patterns. Thanks to new sensor technologies such as animal movement tags, camera traps and passive acoustic sensors and new ways of analysing these data with artificial intelligence, scientists studying the impact of anthropogenic change now have access to huge amounts of data about our changing environment and declining wildlife populations. Kate Jones is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity at University College London’s Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research. Winner of the 2008 Philip Leverhulme Award for Outstanding Contributions to Zoology, Professor Jones will review some of the latest technological advances in sensing, analysing, monitoring, and responding to wildlife population declines, focusing on her own work with bioacoustics. Kate argues that although these technologies will help us to better understand the natural world and to further engage people with their environment, they have the potential to be very disruptive and discusses whether we are really ready for Conservation 4.0!