EYES ON RECOVERY

Eyes on Recovery was WWF-Australia's large-scale camera sensor initiative that used innovative AI technology to track wildlife recovery following the catastrophic 2019-20 Australian bushfires. This initiative is a Google-supported collaboration between WWF-Australia, WWF-US, Conservation International and a range of on-ground land managers and research groups.

Eyes on Recovery launched in the wake of the 2019-20 bushfires, where approximately 10 million hectares of land burned across southeast Australia. During these catastrophic fires, an estimated 3 billion animals were killed or displaced and there was great uncertainty around whether threatened species like the critically endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart survived.

Eyes on Recovery assessed fire impacts and the recovery of a broad suite of threatened wildlife species including Kangaroo Island dunnarts, koalas, spotted-tail quolls, brush-tailed rock- wallabies, southern brown bandicoots, parma wallabies, and long-nosed potoroos. This initiative informed on-the-ground management action to provide help to Australia’s iconic wildlife where they needed it most.

The Eyes on Recovery cameras were located across four Australian states and included 17 unique monitoring surveys. Each survey applied different methods to target key threatened species at sites between 2020 and 2023 and captured an incredible 8.5 million images.

Eyes on Recovery used Wildlife Insights to draw information from the millions of camera images collected as part of the initiative.

Wildlife Insights is a global, online platform powered by Google AI. It combines wildlife image management, storage, sharing and analysis capabilities into one user-friendly tool. Initial images collected during Eyes on Recovery helped train this platform to accurately identify Australian fauna, saving hours of processing time.

Across the nine Eyes on Recovery landscapes, 151 species were detected and identified in camera images. Many threatened species were identified, with our surveys even finding previously unrecorded populations of brush-tailed rock-wallabies. Other threatened species like koalas, long-nosed potoroos and southern brown bandicoots were also detected in all Eyes on Recovery surveys within their range, telling a positive story of species resilience in the wake of this catastrophic fire season.

Monitoring the critically endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart revealed perhaps one of the greatest recovery stories, as it was detected on 30% of monitoring sites on Kangaroo Island by January 2021, 70% of sites by November 2021 and 90% of sites by July 2022.

Across the 17 Eyes on Recovery surveys, more than 30 management activities were identified, ranging from invasive animal control in post-fire habitats, to hazard reduction activities, and development and implementation of artificial refugia for animals in post-fire landscapes.

A particularly exciting outcome centred on the use of these artificial habitat refuges as effective shelters for threatened species after fires. For example, camera surveys of nest boxes installed in burnt areas for endangered greater gliders found that 100% of the nest boxes were used by gliders throughout the survey period.

To find out more about this incredible initiative, please explore the Eyes on Recovery reports included below.