In the late '90s, wildlife conservationists Zoe Jewell and Sky Alibhai were grappling with a troubling realization. The pair had been studying black rhino populations in Zimbabwe, and they spent a good deal of their time shooting the animals with tranquilizer darts and affixing radio collars around their necks. But after years of work, the researchers realized there was a major problem: Their technique, commonly used by all manner of wildlife scientists, seemed to be causing female rhinos to have fewer offspring. The researchers published their findings in 2001, igniting a controversy in the conservation world. The problem, says Duke University professor of conservation ecology Stuart Pimm, is that being "collared" is extremely stressful for animals.

AI solutions are designed to enhance human efforts – not replace them. With deep learning, given enough data, a computer can be trained to perform human-like tasks such as identifying footprint images and recognizing patterns in a similar way to indigenous trackers - but with the added ability to apply these concepts at a much larger scale and more rapid pace. Analytics really underpins the whole thing, potentially giving insights into species populations that WildTrack never had before.