Taranaki conservation projects convinced AI can be force for good

Two Taranaki conservation initiatives are convinced artificial intelligence can be a force for good in the environmental space.

The 800 Trust is planting native trees and managing pests over about 1600 hectares of retired farmland and former forests in the East Taranaki back country.

It has developed Hark, which uses acoustic sensors and AI to record and monitor forests, analysing bird calls, detecting pests and tracking changes in the environment over time.

Project lead Miranda Wells said AI had huge potential to make wildlife monitoring faster and more affordable.

"Hark is basically a listening device, but it's on the edge, and when I say on the edge, it does all its processing on the device itself, and it's able to listen to many and run many, many AI models in real time and give real time alerts of what has been heard, and that could be a bird, that could be a pest or that could be a chainsaw."

Wells said the device sent a notification to a cellphone and decisions could then be made about what next steps to take.

"So, if your focus is that you're trying to find the last possum in an area, and you get a notification in real time that it's just detected a possum.

"Then you listen to it and you're able to get out of your pyjamas and put your Swanndri on and go out there and find that possum, or if you're after a particular rare bird and you want to know when it's coming into your area so that you can do extra pest control. It also does that for you."

Wells said Hark empowered landowners, individuals, iwi and hapu to understand what was going on in a particular space, in the taiao, the environment.

The 800 Trust and another Taranaki organisation - Wildlife.ai - were recently among 16 Asia Pacific organisations selected to join Google Deepmind's AI for the Planet Accelerator.

Wells, who travelled to Singapore for an initial week-long boot camp with another member of the 800 Trust team, said they worked alongside DeepMind experts and were now working to push the project along before returning to Asia in December.

"Working with Google DeepMind provides an exciting opportunity to push that technology further and explore applications that could benefit conservation projects both here in Taranaki and around the world."

Wells said despite some personal reservations about the pace AI was progressing at, she was enthusiastic about its application in the conservation arena.

"It's impossible for humans to be out there across the whole of the country monitoring pest control and so we do need to find smart ways of doing things to achieve our goal of being pest free by 2050, and so AI definitely has a purpose and here is a prime example of where AI can be used for good."

Wildlife.ai is developing Wildlife Watcher, an AI-powered camera which can identify and count smaller mammals, reptiles, and amphibians which are typically harder to monitor using traditional methods.

Biologist Victor Anton from Wildlife.ai said the selection of both organisations for DeepMind was a reflection of the broader innovation and commitment of the Taranaki conservation sector.

"To have two Taranaki organisations included in a cohort of only 16 from around the world shows just how advanced our region is when it comes to conservation.

"When it comes to restoring our natural environment, the world truly is watching Taranaki."

Wildlife.ai was also developing a marine monitoring platform - Spyfish Aotearoa - to analyse underwater footage far faster than traditional methods.

The 800 Trust and Wildlife.ai were both finalists in the Best Hi-Tech Solution for the Public Good category at the 2026 NZ Hi-Tech Awards with the 800 Trust taking out the top prize.