IBM and WWF-Germany to Build New AI Solution to Support Conservation of Keystone Species
IBM News, Monday, August 12th, 2024
IBM and the World Wide Fund For Nature - Germany (WWF) announced they will work together to explore developing a new solution to support the monitoring of keystone species, starting with the critically endangered African forest elephant.
Combining IBM's expertise in sustainability and technology with WWF's extensive experience in wildlife conservation, the new solution will be designed to utilize AI-powered visual inspection to enhance elephant tracking, supporting the accurate identification of individual elephants from camera trap photos. The goal of this solution is to help support key conservation efforts of African forest elephants, which have been shown to increase carbon storage in their forest habitats .
In the future, this technology may also be used by organizations to assess the financial value of nature's contributions to people (NCP) provided by African forest elephants, such as carbon sequestration 'services', recognizing the important role they play in maintaining healthy ecosystems.