The conservation technology revolution has begun, and it means that the power to save our planet lies at the hands of each one of us, even (and perhaps especially) if you are not a conservation biologist.
The sheer magnitude of human-induced environmental changes that our planet is experiencing, and the resulting continuous decline in biodiversity, have made the field of conservation biology highly dependent on technological solutions. Wildlife managers and policy makers worldwide are using modern technologies in almost every aspect of their work from using satellites and drones to monitor wildlife, habitats, and threats, to fabricating wildlife products in order to fight poaching, or use biological engineering to battle invasive species. However, a common feature shared by most of these efforts is that they rely on technological solutions that were originally developed for other purposes (such as for the military of medical industries). Furthermore, conservation technology has been criticized as deepening the so called ‘north/south’ divide" by using technologies that are manufactured and distributed by ‘developed’ countries and thereby excluding local communities in ‘developing’ countries from having any control over policy implementation and management decision-making in their own lands.
In an recent publication in the journal Conservation Letters, Oded, together with José Lahoz-Monfort from the University of Melbourne, Australia, call for the biodiversity conservation community to evolve from their traditional role as consumers of technology to becoming innovation leaders and to actively seek to create novel technologies which would provide conservation tools and solutions that are specific, low-cost, modular and open-source. This technological revolution is already underway with several new initiatives dedicated to finding technological solutions to conservation problems using a bottom-up approach. The paper outlines these current efforts as well as the critical mind-set changes required to coordinate these efforts and scale them up in order to support the development and effective deployment of conservation technology tools at unprecedented scales.
