The Key Role of Community Science and Technology in Understanding ESA-listed Species

A key element of creating informed and reliable maps of species distributions is using data from publicly available community science databases. Read more about how important community-collected data are in our refined range mapping project …

Tracking Emerging Innovations: Aerial Vehicles with Force

Out on a mountainside in Hawaii are a bunch of snails we're concerned about. Some we're concerned about because their numbers have dwindled far too low to be sure they are buffered against extinction. Others are invasive species, such as the African …

Introducing the CCI Seminar Series: Kicking off with emerging science on threats to wildlife

We're kicking off the CCI Seminar Series with a talk on brand-new--not even published (but soon to be)--science of conservation, Quantifying Threats to Improve Species Recovery, from Dr. Matthias Leu (College of William Mary) and Dr. Aaron Haines …

Valentina's Legacy

I am at Defenders of Wildlife's Washington, D.C. office as a Center for Conservation Innovation intern. The primary project I am working on is the 'threats project,' where we take data from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) documents to classify …

The Cost of Underfunding

The Endangered Species Act was passed into law in 1973 as a bipartisan statement on America's commitment to protecting species from extinction. Almost all of the species listed under the ESA are still with us today and dozens have been formally …

Conserving the Sidekicks

As humans, we value species for two main reasons. One is economic value. Species that we rely on for sustenance, clothing, ecotourism, or other products are regarded more highly than those that don't contribute to our economy. Another reason is …

Satellites Guide Habitat-Friendly Solar

Although there are many different methods of image classification, this project focused on two machine learning techniques: random forest classification and deep neural networks (DNN).

Web Apps for Tiny Mice

Listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) since 1985, the Alabama beach mouse builds complex burrows throughout the coastal dunes of Alabama. Unfortunately for the mouse, it's not the only critter that enjoys what the Alabama shores …

Oil and Gas Research for Lizards

The dunes sagebrush lizard is a small spiny lizard that inhabits shinnery oak sand dunes in parts of eastern New Mexico and west Texas. The species has been under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act since 1982, because that …

Threat-a-Thon

Read more about CCI's Threat-a-Thon: A collaborative effort between CCI staff and interns to classify the many threats facing the 1,662 ESA-listed species.