"A green desert": Can AI help restore the UK's biodiversity?

If you go down to the woods today, be sure for an IT surprise

When we think of technology and climate change, we're often quick to blame rising temperatures on data centres and cryptocurrencies, as well as the technology giants who talk a good game but whose actions fall short of their lofty goals.

But there is good news, too. Technology hasn't only cost the world in terms of climate; in fact, it has a significant role to play in helping the planet. Many of these projects take place far from residential areas, in offshore windfarms and remote data centres; but a collaboration between charities, academia and private industry means you might see some signs of change closer to home next Spring.

The UK is doing "quite badly" on biodiversity, says Stephanie Wray, chair of The Mammal Society. Biodiversity, a measure of the variety of life on Earth, is important because the needs of different species, including humans, are so diverse: all life exists in a delicate balance, and losing one small part can have far-reaching consequences.

Over a quarter of UK mammal species are at risk of extinction

"Quite badly" is a dramatic understatement: globally, the world is losing species at an unprecedented rate, with close to a million at risk of extinction today. The UK is certainly not immune.

"We did a study recently using IUCN methodology, called the Red List for Britain's Mammals. It showed that over a quarter of UK mammal species are actually at risk of extinction, and that's including things that we expect to be common, like rodents, which we would expect to be quite common species: things that breed rapidly, that are small animals, that should exist in large numbers - so something's gone really badly wrong," she says.

One of those species is the red squirrel: native to our shores, it has lost as much as half of its range in the UK. There are only about 300,000 left in the wild, versus more than 3 million grey squirrels. And it's not all down to the invading species.

"There are some direct interspecific competition issues, but also, like the rest of biodiversity, we need to know: what about the changes that we're making? How are they affecting the red squirrel? Is the decline in red squirrels related in any way to the general decline in biodiversity in those areas, and what are the factors that we can understand that distinguish between areas where reds are still doing well and maybe not so well?"

The Mammal Society has launched a new project with Rainforest Connection, the University of Bristol and Huawei to answer some of these questions by monitoring red squirrels in the wild, using artificial intelligence. In the coming months they will be placing devices in UK woodland that can record sound data and upload it to the cloud, where they can analyse it using Huawei's software.

"It's the first time we've tried to use sound and acoustic technology to monitor red squirrels. That's interesting from our perspective in the first place, because of course, surveying squirrels is quite time-consuming. You don't always see a lot of squirrels; you're out tramping through woodlands looking for drays - the nests that they make up in the trees - and spotting individual squirrels, so it's very labour intensive. It's not necessarily an accurate survey technique in that way.

"What using technology gives us the opportunity to do is to just collect so much more data in real time than we would be able to do with our researchers out on foot."

The devices, called Guardians, are effectively a waterproof box with a sound recorder, an aerial and solar panels. First developed by Rainforest Connection, they have already been used around the world to monitor species like Darwin's Fox. But the interesting bit is the software.

"Recording sounds to measure wildlife is not new - we do it for bats all the time - but one of the big issues with it is recognition of individual species' calls and managing the amount of data.

"What this [AI] can do is we can use pattern matching, so it can learn the calls that we're interested in. We can teach it what a red squirrel sounds like, what a grey squirrel sounds like, what a red squirrel that's angry or frightened sounds like - or what a red squirrel sounds like when it meets a lady red squirrel. We can teach it to recognise these different sounds, we can put these recorders at intervals all over the forest, and we can get much richer data about what's going on.

"We can see how the animals are interacting, how many there might be, what they're doing, and build up much more of a picture; and we can get the AI that's onboard these devices to just filter out what we're interested in and upload that to the cloud in real time."

One of the particularly important potential uses for this technology is its ability to measure biodiversity: a key measure of the health of the natural world, and one currently under discussion at COP15 in Kunming, China.

"We're very proud in the UK of our green and pleasant land, but sometimes it's a bit of a green desert. It's just a uniform green growing crops or growing grass commercially, with not a great deal of diversity in life in it."

By analysing the recorded sounds, Wray expects to be able to establish an index of biodiversity, determining if squirrels do better in more or less diverse environments.

Having firm measures like this, which can prove biodiversity is rising or falling, are going to be important when it comes to tracking and delivering on the commitments coming out of COP15 - and COP26, later this year.

The UK's squirrels will start hibernating soon, but come Spring - in time for the mating season - the Mammal Society and its partners will have installed Guardian devices at locations around the country.

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