109442

We are investigating a new method to study grizzly bears (Ursus arctos), which harnesses recent developments in machine learning to identify individuals through facial recognition and camera trap imagery. Recent developments in technology are starting to be leveraged as tools to aid conservation of the world’s biodiversity. Conservation technology facilitates a new era of field research focused on systematic, non-invasive methods that enable sharing of data to increase the application of new knowledge. We propose to 1) develop facial recognition software for grizzly bears, and 2) conduct field trials to develop a new method of monitoring that can be used by biologists, the wildlife tourism industry, and citizen scientists. Data collection will take the form of camera trap surveys focused on collecting footage of individual bears, tracking their movements, and assessing their activity patterns. These data will then help to train our facial recogntion system for the species and identify bears and their movements in Goat Range Park.