Figuring out what technology to use to monitor a species you’re studying? Or maybe you’re developing a new tech product for conservation and are in need of some help?

There’s now a tech tool for that, bringing together those who use conservation tech out in the field with those who develop it.

Developed by a team at conservation technology community WILDLABS, the Inventory is Wikipedia-style platform for everything conservation technology. Scientists, conservationists and researchers need only search like they would on Wikipedia to get details on what technology they can deploy for their work. They can also get information on the best products in the market, along with reviews and tips from other scientists who may have used the product in the past.

“The main motivation was people in our community telling us that it’s just hard for them to find systematic, consolidated information,” Jake Burton, project officer at WILDLABS, told Mongabay in a video interview.

In recent decades, scientists have deployed a wide array of tech tools to monitor, track and study biodiversity around the world. As uptake has increased, conservationists and technologists have further developed and adapted things like acoustic recorders, camera traps, drones and artificial intelligence models to meet their requirements. However, researchers often work in silos, unaware of developments in other parts of the world.

“One of the big issues that our sector faces is that information can sometimes be dispersed and hard to find versus in other sectors,” Alex Rood, communications and community management associate at WILDLABS, told Mongabay in a video interview. “This leads to duplication of efforts because you just aren’t aware of what else is going on.”

It’s this barrier that the Inventory aims to overcome. In addition to existing tech products, it also allows users to display details about ongoing research and development projects, with the goal of helping these projects find funding, expertise and collaborations.

Jake Burton and Alex Rood spoke with Mongabay’s Abhishyant Kidangoor about the motivation behind building the Inventory, how scientists and conservationists can use it and what it took to develop the product. The following interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

Mongabay: How would you describe the Inventory to someone who knows nothing about it?

Jake Burton: The Inventory is essentially a Wikipedia-inspired database of all conservation technology. It captures products like hardware, software, databases and anything that’s used as a tool for conservation. It also captures things which are in the research-and-development stage and are going to become a product later on, such as a prototype or piece of hardware. We are also listing organizations that people belong to. So it’s trying to capture what technology is available around the world, what people are using, and people’s reviews of that tech. It’s mainly used for people to find information, but it’s also for people to contribute their thoughts and their experiences.

Mongabay: What gaps were you trying to fill with this product?

Jake Burton: At WILDLABS, we are a community. We’re always trying to listen to what the community needs and what the wider conservation tech space is looking out for. We found that, although there are lots of useful conservation tech — everyone has their own website, and everyone has case studies and research papers about tech — it’s all quite dispersed, in different formats, and it’s quite hard for people to digest information. The main motivation was people in our community telling us that it’s just hard for them to find systematic and consolidated information in the same format and it’s hard to find a trusted, structured review of tech. We’re an established community with tech specialists and conservationists. We thought it’d be really useful to build a database of tech so people can find it in an established community in one place, and they can see what people in our community think about the tech and what context they’ve used it in.

Mongabay: What did it take to develop this product? Where did you gather all the data from?

Jake Burton: We got specialists from our community and partner organizations as well as beta testers to fill in a baseline of content because there’s no point in releasing a Wikipedia of conservation tech without some starting content. The building basically started off with simultaneously designing what it could physically look like on a website, and how it might work with developers. The initial stage was gathering baseline content in a spreadsheet. That snowballed into uploading all of that information onto the database. Then we’d go through and add images and refine the information. Part of the beta-testing phase, which I think is probably a key point of development, was engaging with manufacturers and developers to get their input as to what they find useful. This included getting some very useful content such as biologging companies or bioacoustics audio recording companies taking ownership of their pages and adding content that they think would be useful for people.

Alex Rood: There was also a lot of work for the review system, asking people how they classified good and bad products in different domains. If you go to write a review, each of the product categories will have different specifications and qualifications. How you rate an acoustic recording device is going to be very different from how you rate a camera trap in terms of its battery life and being durable in a rugged environment. There was also a lot of back and forth with the community in terms of what they value in certain types of tech in order to help build out the specifics of the review system.

Jake Burton: Part of the beta-testing process was finding specialists in each sector such as bioacoustics or biologging and getting their opinions on how to gauge a product. Each time you create a product on the Inventory, you can tag it. For example, you can say, “This is a bioacoustic piece of hardware.” That will change the positive and negative traits that are available in a review. They’re all customized to each type of content. The review system allows people to upload photos of them using the product in the field and go into a lot more detail about the product specifics. Our main goal is to give context as to why people would choose a specific piece of hardware or why something would be more useful for a specific species. There might be a biologger that only works for a specific species, and it can’t go into water, and people need to know this stuff.

Mongabay: What can conservationists or ecologists expect when they use the Inventory? What will their experience be like?

Jake Burton: The first thing they would be able to do is browse what’s currently on there. It’s currently a collection of baseline information that we’ve collected on products and research and development projects. They can browse. They can filter by different things such as the species they are interested in. If they were interested in snakes, there is a reptile filter. Or they could search for snakes. So if anyone has mentioned snakes in any of the products, it should come up.

If that person is interested in contributing their experience on a product and if the product already exists on the Inventory, they could go to the product and would be able to leave a review. We’ve got some checks and balances to make sure there’s no spam. Essentially, they will be able to get a badge approved to edit the Inventory or leave a review.

If the product doesn’t exist, they would be able to add that product, even if they were just adding the title and a summary of that product. They could say, “I used this piece of acoustic device in this situation.” They could just put the name of the acoustic device, a summary of it, a few simple tags, and then leave a review. If a manufacturer hasn’t been onboarded to create the page for their products, anyone can create this page.

Alex Rood: Let’s assume this hypothetical situation where every piece of tech is on the Inventory and it has hundreds of reviews. If somebody was going to find tech to study snakes, and they go to search snakes or they search tags with the reptile tag, they would theoretically be able to see all of the products that are related to that ecosystem or to that species group, as well as the companies or organizations that produce that product. It will also show the people that are on WILDLABS that work at that organization or are involved with producing that product. You’re also able to see the price range and where to buy it. You could go from step one to the final step in terms of finding a piece of tech to buying it and contacting somebody who works for the company for support.

Mongabay: What are you hearing from the community? What feedback are you receiving?

Jake Burton: People are excited because they’ve been mentioning this to us for a while. So it’s great to see things come into fruition from a concept to an actual deployed, functioning website. We’re at the stage where people are excited to add their content. We’re getting a lot of excitement from manufacturers to feature their products. I think once we get more and more manufacturers on there, people will be excited to leave their reviews. We’ve already had a few reviews. But I feel like once the database is expanded, there’ll be even more excitement for people to add products and leave reviews.

Mongabay: What does the future look like for the Inventory? How are you working to develop it further?

Jake Burton: There are two avenues that we’re focusing on right now for the Inventory. One is content. We’ve got baseline content, and it’s obviously really useful stuff. We’ve onboarded quite a few manufacturers. But I think we’re going to start doing thematic onboarding. We’ve been slowly moving through movement ecology. Soon, we’re going to start working on bioacoustics, in terms of engaging manufacturers to see if they’re interested in adding their content and getting people to leave reviews and case studies. So expanding, improving and refining the content, while getting the word out that the Inventory exists in a thematic way is our approach this time. In the beta, it was anyone that was interested. Now, it’s anyone that is interested, but we’re going to target specific groups of people, and try to get that community interested. So over time, it’ll get more robust, more refined and more useful.

The other aspect we want to improve is the R&D projects, which is the second type of posts that you can add to the Inventory. These are not quite ready and are not available to be sold. They might just be working on developing those. Currently you can list what would be useful for your R&D projects. If someone visits that page, they can see what would be useful to help develop that technology, like more time, funding or expertise that they need in a certain area. Collaboration is obviously one of the main goals, especially if there are conservationists and tech specialists from different worlds wanting to work together.

Alex Rood: One of the big issues that our sector faces is that information can sometimes be dispersed and hard to find versus in other sectors. This leads to duplication of efforts because you just aren’t aware of what else is going on. So being able to see what’s in development and what R&D projects are happening around the world, you’re able to see, “Oh, this person is working on the same exact thing that I’m working on. Maybe either I won’t work on it, or better yet, we can collaborate, work on this together and put our heads together.” In terms of efficient resource management, it’s really helpful in terms of knowing what’s going on and where things are in the pipeline so that people aren’t spending their time working on something that’s already being worked on.

Mongabay: Finally, why do you think a product like the Inventory is important at this point in time?

Alex Rood: If we zoom out and think about why WILDLABS was formed in the first place, it was essentially to solve a similar problem that the Inventory is addressing. There was a ton of fractured communication in the conservation tech sector, and WILDLABS was formed as a way to build those pathways for communication and collaboration.

For us, the Inventory is the natural next step to take from building WILDLABS, because WILDLABS has become this treasure trove of knowledge, information, context and avenues for collaboration. It’s also a really awesome reflection of how engaged and motivated the community is. The Inventory is community-run. If nobody contributes anything to it, it’ll sit empty. But if people are adding their experience, it’ll proliferate and be so incredibly useful.

Banner image: Common zebra (Equus quagga) in Kriger National Park, South Africa. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Abhishyant Kidangoor is a staff writer at Mongabay. Find him on 𝕏 @AbhishyantPK.

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