The world is racing to stem biodiversity loss in hard-to-access coastal areas. Can China’s smart tech be a game changer?

For scientists, detecting the critically endangered aquatic mammal with the naked eye is also extremely difficult. This has created challenges in scaling conservation efforts.

There are now only slightly more than 1,200 of the finless porpoises in China’s Yangtze River, the longest river in Asia. Population numbers of these porpoises have only seen a slight increase, after state protection kicked in. 

“There is a lot of sediment in the river and naturally the waters are not crystal clear. You cannot see a porpoise unless it decides to stick its head up and say hello,” said James Hardcastle, who heads the Protected and Conserved Areas team at International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 

“That has made it very hard to implement effective conservation in a river ecosystem,” he told Eco-Business. 

James Hardcastle, who leads IUCN’s work on protected and conserved areas, speaking at the Tech4Nature summit held in Shenzhen, China. Image: Huawei

Yet in recent years, conservation specialists have found that the use of advanced technology and artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to take biodiversity monitoring to a different level. These new tools and technology-enabled applications might help save the finless porpoise, or even propel global conservation efforts. 

Hardcastle, who is involved in a technological initiative pioneered by Chinese tech firm Huawei and supported by IUCN, describes the attempts to scale the use of technology in conservation projects as “revolutionising”. The installation of underwater acoustic recorders and hydrophones, while linking collected data to a system where it can be processed and analysed by AI, for example, have helped to better detect the finless porpoise, he shared in an interview on the sidelines of a Huawei-led summit held in Shenzhen recently. 

Launched in 2020, the Tech4Nature initiative, IUCN’s first-ever partnership with the tech sector, is now in its second phase, with the use of digital technologies expanded to drive effective and equitable management of areas rich in biodiversity.

Underwater acoustic recorders and hydrophones can help better track the Yangtze finless porpoise. Image: Xiaoqiang Wang

Technology-enabled conservation pilots have been identified in at least six countries, and will be implemented for the period of 2023 to 2026. These include efforts to protect the mangrove crab on Marajo Island in Brazil, as well as a project to support the coral reef ecosystem in a Kenyan national reserve. 

A pilot project is also planned in China’s Anhui Tongling Yangtze Porpoise National Reserve. 

Hardcastle said particular attention will be paid to protected areas along vulnerable coastlines. Under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework signed off at the COP15 summit in December 2022, biodiverse coastal areas were identified as being under higher threat than others, he said. 

In May, according to the first global mangrove assessment for the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, more than half of all mangrove ecosystems were found to be at risk of collapse by 2050. 

“The time frames are more compressed,” said Hardcastle, adding that places such as Mexico and Brazil see their coastlines impacted by intense development, and have been prioritised. 

Hardcastle, who also fronts IUCN’s engagement work on the proposed “30X30” global goal to protect at least 30 per cent of lands, freshwater and oceans by 2030 under the United Nations-led biodiversity framework, said that the spotlight is too often placed on the ambitious quantitative targets. 

The ultimate goal is not just to conserve “30 per cent of anywhere”, it is to protect areas that are particularly biodiverse, and where conservation management has proved effective, he said. “There is now very little investment in the quality of management.” 

“Too many of the world’s protected and conserved areas are not operating efficiently. They are not able to secure the biodiversity they are set up to protect,” he said.

Nature access in ‘treacherous terrains’

In the Dzilam State Reserve, a coastal reserve located in the north of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, sensors and cameras have been deployed to find and protect the North American jaguar.

Ecologists estimate that around 4,000 to 5,000 jaguars live in the wild in Mexico. More than half of these big cats live in the Yucatán Peninsula, making it one of the primary regions for their conservation. But their existence is threatened by illegal poaching, deforestation and climate change. 

Under the Huawei technological initiative, using audio and video monitoring technologies, a team of researchers has collected more than 80,000 photos, 600,000 audio recordings and extensive video footage of wild animals in the project’s first phase. 146 species have been identified to date, including seven wild jaguars, confirming their presence in the reserve for the first time.

Regina Cervera, who leads the work on Tech4Nature Mexico, shared that deep learning algorithms which can help detect diverse images quickly have also been developed and applied to speed up detection of the animals. Known as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), these algorithms require at least 60,000 images for accurate classification to work. 

The first phase of the Tech4Nature project is hence just a start to a bigger endeavour, said Cervera, who is also the project coordinator of women-led organisation C Minds which looks at promoting the responsible use of technology for impact in Latin America. The research team will next have to exchange data with adjacent federal reserves to monitor if there is movement of the jaguars across multiple sites. 

This could provide stronger justification for a broader Mesoamerican Biological Corridor that will connect entire regions of high biodiversity and large tracts of tropical forests that are home to valuable endemic species. The Indigenous Mayan culture and language also still thrives in the communities living across the Yucatán Peninsula. Cervera said that capacity building sessions for the locals will be prioritised in the project’s next phase. 

Seven wild jaguars have been detected in Dzilam State Reserve since audio and video monitoring technologies were deployed under the Tech4Nature initiative. It confirms the presence of these big cats in the reserve for the first time. Image: Huawei

The Dzilam State Reserve is home to a diversity of unique ecosystems, such as mangroves and wetlands. But Hardcastle said this also means that there are difficult terrains that researchers and locals have to navigate to get any chance of spotting a jaguar. Technology is meant to make the information-gathering process easier, not replace the rangers and people doing the work, he said. 

“Gloves, boots, leech socks, fully-covered gear, you will need all of these. The ground is treacherous, where it is all swamp and wetland. There are cenotes, which are like deep water pools. If you fall into one of those and you cannot swim, then it’s bye bye, straight down,” he said. 

With another conservation pilot at the Hainan National Park in China, audio monitoring devices, cloud systems and AI are deployed to understand the behaviour of the critically endangered Hainan gibbons. Hardcastle, who used to work on gibbon conservation in Southeast Asia, said that on a typical research mission without the aid of technological devices, there will need to be three different research groups venturing into the forests late at night to set up “listening posts” and be in time to catch the gibbons “singing in the morning”, then triangulate and confirm that a gibbon has been heard. 

There are only 37 individual Hainan gibbons in the world, all of which reside in Hainan National Park in China. Image: Huawei

The process is not productive, said Hardcastle. “There were more scientists than gibbons. They are running around, trying to decide where the gibbons are, what they are doing… With technology, you just stick a device there and you remove the complexity. It does remove the fun, but it means you can get a more accurate picture of the gibbon’s behaviour. It leads to better decisions.”

At the same time, scientists now have new data to work with and their research “feeds back” into the management of gibbon conservation programmes, he said. There are now only 37 individual Hainan gibbons remaining in the world, all of which reside in Hainan National Park. 

Since November 2021, monitoring equipment installed in the park has collected more than 100,000 voiceprint samples. The data will provide a scientific basis for identifying lone animals, the population distribution of gibbon groups and priority areas for habitat restoration.

Technology pitfalls

Amid a national push for rapid urbanisation, China has spent over a decade applying smart city technologies at home. Its ‘Big Tech’ companies have also been increasing their competitive edge in advanced green technology to combat global warming. 

Hardcastle believes that nature and wildlife conservation organisations stand to benefit from working with these technology providers, and more tech firms should think about how they can directly invest into conservation management. 

For example, Hardcastle points to how Huawei’s fibre optic cables are used for detecting sound and disturbance near oil and gas pipelines. “Imagine that instead of having a fence around a national park, you have something like this that can detect animals passing through. We need to learn to adapt and repurpose the technology.”

Cervera, however, noted that smart AI systems historically have not “integrated the perspectives of Hispanic populations within their design and algorithms” and cautioned that the participation and empowerment of local Indigenous communities must be recognised in technology-enabled projects. “Or else it results in a sort of extractive industry where research is implemented, but the knowledge is not given back to the community,” she reminded.

The way the technologies are applied should also be “clean”, so that any potential increase in carbon dioxide emissions is mitigated, she reminded. 

Chinese tech firm Huawei and IUCN hosted the 2024 Tech4Nature Summit in Shenzhen, China to mark the commencement of phase two of their global partnership. IUCN’s McBreen (first from left) and C Minds’ Cervera (third from right) spoke on a panel discussion. Image: Huawei

James McBreen, programme manager at the IUCN Centre for Conservation Action, said that the technological solutions have to be developed together with local communities. For example, with the jaguars in the Yucatán Peninsula, researchers still rely on local rangers or villagers to guide them to the “best spots” for the installation of the camera traps. 

The rangers also learn how to use and maintain the devices – they change the batteries for the cameras and replace the memory cards, then upload the images to the online server. “Involving them will allow them to continue to be guardians of the landscapes they live in,” McBreen said. 

“We need to be responsive to their needs and make sure there is no overreach,” he added. 

“Technology is a force multiplier, but it is not a silver bullet. We need to apply the digital solutions in a measured way, and continue to address the drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change.” 

Eco-Business’ exclusive access to IUCN and the Tech4Nature summit in Shenzhen, China was facilitated and sponsored by Huawei.