Yandex Cloud and Yandex School of Data Analysis (SDA) have successfully completed the first phase of their project on monitoring wild animals in the Sailyugemsky National Park in the Altai Republic. Yandex Cloud experts and ShAD students have developed a neural network that can recognize 10 different animal species in photos and videos obtained from camera traps. Examples of these species are snow leopards (irbis), listed in the Red Book.
This innovative technology will be of great help to scientists; It will allow them to effectively study snow leopards in their natural habitat and develop strategies to protect their populations. The exact number of snow leopards is currently unknown, but their number in Russia is estimated to be less than 90. 44 snow leopards were discovered in Altai, 24 of which live in Sailyugemsky National Park.
National Park Director Denis Malikov stated that snow leopards have not been adequately studied due to their inaccessible habitat and crepuscular lifestyle. Additionally, they hunt alone, making it difficult to study them. Experts used camera traps with motion sensors to track and study the behavior and numbers of these animals. Previously, searching for rare animals among thousands of photographs took a lot of time, but with the help of a neural network, this process was accelerated. ShAD students and Yandex Cloud experts trained the model on a large number of labeled photos and videos and created a neural network that can identify and classify animals in images. Further improvements to the neural network will target the identification of specific leopards based on their appearance.
Source: Ferra
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