On the 16th October 2019, Technology for Wildlife (TfW) organised a panel discussion on the ‘Role of Technology in Conservation” at the Student Conference on Conservation Science, Bengaluru. The format of the panel discussion was 15-20 minute presentations by each panelist, followed by a few questions from the audience for that panelist; once all the panelists spoke, there was time for questions at the end.

The panelists were Prithvi from Appiko, Abhi from Wildly, Jose from the Wildlife Trust of India, and Shashank from TfW. Unfortunately, this had to be an all-male panel; though we had invited four women working in this space to participate, none of them were able to make it.

The panel began with Prithvi from Appiko, who walked us through the range of Appiko’s products, with an emphasis on their sensors that allow regular cameras to be used as camera traps. I found their explanation to why they had chosen to build camera traps interesting since there are already off-the-shelf camera traps available. In Prithvi’s opinion, even camera traps used for tiger estimation, which are perhaps one of the most abundantly used technological devices in Indian conservation, were origninally developed to optimize hunting and are not always conducive for wildlife surveys. This is indicative of the current relationship between technology and conservation even for a well-funded issue such as tiger conservation, where there is limited funding for innovation; technological needs are met through ‘jugaad’ of existing technologies meant for other applications. My favourite take-away from Prithvi’s presentation was his outlook on the role of technology in conservation: “Technology is just a tool for conservation, but with the right tool, you can do a lot more.” 

The next speaker, Abhi from Wildly, was also focused on developing hardware for conservation. Their company is currently building acoustic devices to detect illegal activities in protected areas. Later in the conference, I had a chance to listen to them demonstrate their work during another workshop on Machine and Deep Learning, and it was really interesting to learn what applying these techniques in the current Indian conservation context entails. My most valuable take away from Abhi’s presentations was that their technology was created and developed out of a current conservation need. This, coupled with the fact that they are trying to be open-source and affordable makes them a very interesting organisation, who’s work we will be following.

The third presentation, by Jose from the Wildlife Trust of India, was on his work with Wildlife Crime Prevention. It was a very engaging talk and differed from the others in that he focused on the sustainability of technology more than on sustainable technology. He discussed various technological interventions that have been developed for his work, such as HAWK, and on how his team’s vision and working relationship proved to be more important in ensuring effective technological interventions more than the nature of the technologies themselves.

The final presentation was by Shashank from TfW. Multiple people communicated that they enjoyed his talk and that his enthusiasm was communicated in the presentation. It was the only non-hardware technology business in the group and I think his presentation on our work communicated the varied uses of technology in conservation.

Overall, the panel was interesting and unique. In future iterations of this panel, it may also be useful to invite panelists working in areas related to conservation ecology, such as mainstream ecologists or technologists working outside of conservation. This would help add different perspectives and provide an understanding of the larger picture.