Wild animals are not wilder any more. Frankly stating "wild animal" is the term developed and used by the humans who are now walking the path of wilderness. We humans have proved from our actions that we are now "Wild Humans" destroying the nature, killing the biodiversity and spreading the seeds of inhumanity between nations. Unlike, animals have always been friends of nature and do not interfere with nature's cycle helping to keep it balanced and working.
Statistical studies provide the evidences of our inhuman behaviour - Wildlife population sizes dropped by 69% since 1970, according to WWF's Living Planet Report (LPR) 2022. 47% of mammals and 23% of birds on the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species have been negatively affected by climate change. The Russia-Ukraine war counts the human casualties whereas the biodiversity casualties remain unknown and are not covered by media.
The humanity has now entrusted the humans and has discovered a niche to embed itself into Artificial Intelligence. To support this statement, the revolution 4.0 presents, some cutting-edge projects, like
- World Wildlife Fund and Intel are working in collaboration with researchers on a project to monitor and protect Siberian tigers in China by leveraging artificial intelligence.
- Cornell University researcher Peter Wrege and his team used neural networks, a subset of artificial intelligence, to collect and categorize data on Savanna elephants surviving in dense rainforests of Central Africa.
- Microsoft's Species Classification API Demo uses a machine learning model to identify over 5000 animal and plant species.
Yet, any technology fails without a change in human approach and this change can only be created with young minds of students. The theme of this year's World Wildlife Day is "Partnership for Wildlife Conservation". The universities can be at the front-line of the partnership with communities and industries to collaboratively engineer the solutions for protecting the wildlife and conserving the biodiversity loss.
The Smart Campus Cloud Network, is a digital network of universities, that provides a platform for students for partnership with community and industry to accelerate towards sustainable development by using digital technologies. See www.sccnhub.com
Ar. Durga Kamat
Project Coordinator, Smart Campus Cloud Network
LEED GA, IGBC AP Associate
Environmental Architect