Wednesday 7 November 2018

AI simplifies statewide study of leopards in south India



by Vasudevan Sridharan on 5 November 2018

A six-year study of leopards in the wildlife-rich southern Indian state of Karnataka, using grids of motion-sensor camera traps across the state, suggests the big cats are thriving in a variety of habitats and land uses.

The researchers’ use of machine-learning algorithms significantly reduced the workload needed to identify 363 individual leopards from the sample’s 1.5 million camera-trap images. The figure indicates there are an estimated 2,500 leopards living in Karnataka.

Although a forest department official said the state was unlikely to expand its protected forests in the foreseeable future, the researchers said such a policy was necessary for leopard conservation, stressing that the proximity of natural landscapes to agricultural fields allows leopards to use those unprotected areas.

An extensive study of the leopard population in the wildlife-rich southern Indian state of Karnataka has indicated that these big cats are thriving there, buoying hopes the species’ genetic pool is stable in the region.

Researchers from the Karnataka Forest Department (KFD) and the independent research organization Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) jointly surveyed the cats in protected forests, private lands, rocky outcrops and non-protected natural areas spanning a diverse landscape covering roughly 27,000 square kilometers (10,400 square miles). They used grids of motion-sensor camera traps to better understand leopard distribution and habits in a variety of landscapes.


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