2020
Business Insider, 13 November 2020
Conservation Metrics uses machine learning technology to identify where California red-legged frogs live better than ever before.
Microsoft Github, 15 October 2020
This tutorial demonstrates how to quickly develop an automated system to detect the sounds of a species of interest using only a handful of short clips exemplifying the species. For this tutorial we will build a detector for an endangered bird called the Araripe Manakin.
2019
NPR Planet Money, 09 August 2019
Elephants are being killed at such an alarming rate in some countries, they could go extinct in fewer than 10 years… One team of scientists is trying something different. If they can’t see them, why not listen for them?
Nature, 04 March 2019
Faced with mountains of image and audio data, researchers are turning to artificial intelligence to answer pressing ecological questions.
Landscape Architecture Magazine, 12 February 2019
Algorithms are bringing new kinds of evidence and predictive powers to the shaping of landscapes.
Audubon News, 01 February 2019
Thought to be extinct on the Hawaiian Island for centuries, Newell’s Shearwaters and Hawaiian Petrels were found using acoustic monitoring.
BBC Future, 31 January 2019
Conserving endangered wildlife is an expensive, time consuming job, but new technology may make protecting animals, and catching the poachers who threaten them, easier.
Audubon, Spring 2019
Acoustic monitoring combined with powerful machine learning is giving researchers new insights into the elusive Ashy Storm-Petrel. It’s just one way that artificial intelligence can tackle pressing conservation challenges.
2018
Microsoft Developer Blog, 06 November 2018
Last year, our team undertook a project in partnership with Conservation Metrics to autonomously monitor the breeding population of an endangered bird species using deep learning.
VentureBeat, 08 October 2018
Conservation Metrics, a recipient of Microsoft’s AI for Earth grant program, is using algorithms to analyze a corpus from Cornell University Lab of Ornithology’s Elephant Listening Project.
Quartz Africa, 03 September 2018
Conservationists are teaming up with computer scientists in the hopes that AI technology can help them keep up with poachers decimating the world’s wildlife populations.
Cornell Chronicle, 27 August 2018
Artificial intelligence is helping Cornell’s Elephant Listening Project learn critical information about forest elephants faster, to better protect the endangered animals from poachers and other threats.
Acoustic sensors are collecting large amounts of data around the clock for the Elephant Listening Project.
Audubon, Summer 2018
On the mountainous island of Kauai, elusive shearwaters and petrels burrow deep in the forested terrain. Saving them requires a radical effort, led by a man who is no less extreme.
2017
The AI Podcast, 20 March 2017
We speak with Matthew McKown, CEO of Conservation Metrics, about how deep learning techniques helped rediscover a bird that was once thought extinct, and how GPU-powered AI now helps biologists crunch vast quantities of data to spot trends that would have been impossible to detect before.
2016
O’Reilly Media, Inc., 10 November 2016
Watching the appeal and applications of machine intelligence expand.
All Tech Considered, 29 May 2016
Scientists in California are turning to big data to help save the red-legged frog, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The New York Times, 11 March 2016
If technology helps us save the wilderness, will the wilderness still be wild?

Big Data, Little Birds: How GPUs and Deep Learning Help Scientists Save Threatened Avian Populations
NVIDIA Developer Blog, 26 January 2016
Traveling to remote islands. Scrambling across cliffs to track their quarry. Installing acoustic sensors to detect its every move. Ornithologists — scientists who study birds — often have a little James Bond in them.
2015
Machine Intelligence Report, 23 December 2015
Perspectives and opinions on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
O’Reilly Media, Inc., 10 December 2015
Autonomous systems and focused startups among major changes seen in past year.
Ethical Machines, 10 December 2015
“Ethical Machines is a series of conversations about humans, machines, and ethics. It aims at sparking a deeper, better‐informed debate about the implications of intelligent systems for society and individuals.”
PLOS Ecology Community, 09 December 2015
New remote sensing techniques, which more closely resemble your smartphone’s personal assistant than traditional field sampling, may be able to help.
TechCrunch, 26 November 2015
With these technologies, many industries will be able to make decisions in a data-driven way for the first time.
FiveThirtyEight, 16 October 2015
“We need to improve conservation by improving wildlife monitoring. Counting plants and animals is really tricky business.”
O’Reilly Media, Inc., 28 September 2015
We present a strategic vision for how data-driven approaches to conservation can drive iterative improvements through better information and outcomes-based funding mechanisms, ultimately enabling increasing returns on biodiversity investments.
Anchorage Daily News, 26 January 2015
Now scientists have new information about the level of detail in the songs that bowhead whales sing to one another when they are migrating into the Beaufort Sea each spring.