China's artificial intelligence (AI) is helping safeguard Mexico's jaguar (Panthera onca) population, a large cat species that is listed as near-threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.
The jaguar was deeply embedded in Aztec culture. Across Mexico, wall paintings and carvings of jaguars are common.
But the real ones are gone from central Mexico, and no jaguars are roaming anywhere near the capital city anymore.
Today, they survive mainly in Mexico's southern forests.The Yucatan Peninsula is a stronghold for jaguars, home to nearly 1,700. But for years before, nobody could prove their existence on the peninsula.
The Dzilam State Reserve on the peninsula is a key area to pilot the use of technology for its conservation and effective management.The Tech4Nature project created by IUCN and Huawei's TECH4ALL program helped prove the existence of the big cats on the Yucatan Peninsula, after analyzing tens of thousands of images collected by infrared cameras.
"At the beginning, we collected more than 50,000 images, and also the audio system. It was impossible for us to analyze these within even 200 hours. With Huawei's cloud, as well as all our partners, and the artificial intelligence systems, we were able to analyze this same data in just 10 hours, a 90-percent increase in speed," said Constanza Gomez-Mont, project leader for Tech4Nature Mexico.
AI helps identify not just a jaguar, but which jaguar -- left flank, right flank, cross-referenced -- at a scale and speed no human eyes could match.
"What AI helps us do is speeding up that process, and identify where there are individuals, which individuals they are, and how many you have in your count. All this information about the jaguar population here has encouraged support from landowners around the reserve, so that they can establish voluntary conservation areas," said conservationist Alejandro Pacheco.
"After this program came in, people knew the existence of these cameras, and poaching has kind of decreased," said community monitor Benjamin Campos.
Tech4Nature is a global partnership to scale up success in nature conservation through digital technology innovation, and it has supported 11 flagship projects in eight countries with tailored solutions to conservation challenges, said its official website.
The combination of the information collected by the eco-acoustic monitoring devices and cameras provided decision-makers and stakeholders with a better understanding of the conservation status of the studied ecosystems, behavioral patterns of relevant species, and impact of extreme events such as floods.
And this approach, powered by Chinese AI, has been tested across APEC economies.
"Under APEC, China has many ways to cooperate with other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. We can carry out extensive AI collaboration covering computing power, data and algorithms," said Gai Keke, vice president of Zhongguancun Academy.
China's AI helps safeguard Mexico's jaguars
