Drones and AI Help Researchers Track Bird Populations

In the quiet bayside town of Toorbul, north of Brisbane, the air is filled with the sounds of birds. Amidst this natural chorus, a persistent whirring signals the launch of a drone by University of Queensland researcher Joshua Wilson. Wilson, who previously designed drones as an engineer, now dedicates his expertise to addressing the biodiversity crisis, which he considers the most pressing issue.

“

I used to work as an engineer designing drones, but I started to think more about what I valued and what I wanted to contribute my time to. For me, the biodiversity crisis is the most important thing.

His PhD research over the past four years has focused on employing drones and artificial intelligence for bird population surveys. Wilson found that manually counting birds in drone imagery is incredibly time-consuming. However, by developing a computer vision tool, his team has managed to accelerate the process by approximately 85 times. This technological advancement allows experts to concentrate on conservation efforts rather than being bogged down by laborious data labeling.

"Rather than them spending time labelling birds in drone imagery or navigating really difficult to access sites, it frees up these experts so they can just leave a computer running overnight and spend their time on the more high-value work," Wilson explained. The technology enables experts to process vast amounts of data efficiently, freeing them to focus on more impactful conservation strategies.

“

Manually counting birds in drone imagery is extremely time-consuming. We found that using the computer vision tool that we developed, we could speed up the process by about 85 times.

The initiative addresses a significant global problem: the decline of bird species. In Australia alone, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy reports that over 200 bird species and subspecies are threatened with extinction, a notable increase from the mid-1990s. BirdLife International estimates that more than half of all bird species worldwide are experiencing a decline. While the project began locally in Moreton Bay, supported by the Queensland Wader Study Group and The Moreton Bay Foundation, Wilson aims to develop tools with global applicability, requiring training data from diverse international contexts.

“

Rather than them spending time labelling birds in drone imagery or navigating really difficult to access sites, it frees up these experts so they can just leave a computer running overnight and spend their time on the more high-value work.