An algorithm designed by a research group from the Universities of Bath, Oxford and Twente may be able to help save African elephants from extinction. Coupled with high-resolution imagery, the algorithm enables a satellite to scan large areas of land in short periods of time and collect 5,000 km2 worth of photos, a good fit for the animals' grassland and forest habitats. The tech development is desperately needed as elephant numbers in Africa are estimated to be at just 415,000. The savanna elephant population has reduced by 60 per cent in the last 50 years and the number of forest elephants have fallen by 86 per cent in the previous three decades. The AI technology carries less risk of double counting, does not endanger humans in the data collection process and is less disturbing for the animals - an improvement on techniques used in the past. Earlier this year Dr Ben Okita, co-chair of the IUCN elephant specialist group, named poaching as one of the biggest threats to African elephants who are targeted by ivory traders.

Poachers killed almost a third of the African elephant population between 2007 and 2014, a recent census found. Researchers hope artificial intelligence can help stop poachers and other threats, too.

Acoustic sensors, big data, machine learning and protection of threatened animal species: all these elements go hand in hand in the Elephant Listening Project that is taking place in the jungles of the Republic of the Congo. For 24 hours a day, the sensors collect large amounts of data from the acoustic environment of the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park and neighboring forest areas. Among these data, the sounds of African elephants stand out, whose population has dropped by 30% in just 6 years, mainly due to poaching. But … what is the use of analyzing the sounds of elephants? Well to calculate the variations of its threatened population; but for this it is necessary to identify the sounds produced by the elephants from the rest of the jungle sounds, and then identify the elephants individually in order to count them, an impossible task to be performed from the air . This is possible thanks to Conservation Meetrics, a project promoted by Microsoft within its AI for Earth initiative, based on the use of machine learning to monitor wildlife and evaluate the results of conservation work.

A herd of elephants walks in front of Mount Kilimanjaro in Amboseli National Park. A centuries-old problem that has affected nearly every region on Earth is about to get a high-tech solution. Artificial intelligence company Neurala is using machine learning coupled with cameras and drones to put a stop to the poaching crisis in Africa. Focusing on the rhino population (which, for just black rhinos, has dwindled by 97.6 percent since 1960) and African elephants (35,000 of which were killed last year), the company is enhancing the Lindbergh Foundation's effort to track and predict the paths of both at-risk animals and the poachers who are hunting them. "We believe that Neurala is the first to have AI software that can identify wildlife and poachers," Neurala CEO Massimiliano Versace told the Observer.

"Artificial intelligence company Neurala is using machine learning coupled with cameras and drones to put a stop to the poaching crisis in Africa" writes Business Editor Writing for observer.com. And while the current effort is focused on elephants and rhinos, Versace said this technology could be used to save other animals from poaching as well.We have heard of a company using AI to predict the paths that poachers might take, but that is not working directly with the animals." Neurala's AI will assist human analysts by automatically sifting through terabytes of video taken by drones in real time.