21st Century Wildlife Monitoring – A Case Study of Spotted Owls and Artificial Intelligence
Wildlife monitoring programs, especially those with long-term datasets, are invaluable for informing forest management and conservation decisions in the face of climate change. But monitoring can be costly in terms of time, labor, and money. New technology is ushering in exciting possibilities that can help long-term monitoring programs evolve and benefit from next generation methods. Monitoring northern spotted owls provides an excellent case study.
Research wildlife biologist Damon Lesmeister’s research integrates artificial intelligence and passive acoustic monitoring. This new approach is both effective and minimally intrusive to the owls. Tune in to hear how passive acoustic monitoring can detect spotted owls and their competitors, estimate occupancy rates, detect trends in population levels, and even distinguish between male and female birds.
This promising development in monitoring methodology could be a game changer for forest managers as they strive to track trends in spotted owls and monitor biodiversity in dynamic landscapes. It could facilitate a biodiversity monitoring program with unprecedented flexibility and scale and will likely provide insights in the future that are unimaginable today.
Presenter
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Damon B. Lesmeister
Supervisory Research Wildlife Biologist