Protecting Italy's Oasis of Biodiversity

In this guest post, our partner Rainforest Connection gives an overview of the TECH4ALL ‘Nature Guardian’ project in Italy. Covering three ‘Oasis’ sites designated by project partner WWF Italy, the project aims to study biodiversity and protect natural habitats by preventing illegal activities such as poaching.

Don’t miss the first two posts in this series:

• Protecting Malaysia’s Sarawak Rainforest with Technology
• Tech4Nature: Safeguarding Biodiversity in Mexico

Rainforest Connection authors

Project region

• Astroni Crater, Naples
• Orbetello Lagoon, Tuscany
• Lake Burano, Tuscany

Project scope

RFCx is collaborating with WWF Italy and Huawei Italy to deploy acoustic monitoring systems that enable WWF Italy and local partners to monitor illegal activities in sites in Astroni Crater (a natural reserve created around an extinct volcano), Orbetello (a peninsula in Tuscany), and Burano (an island in the North Venetian Lagoon).

The project aims to enable a comprehensive understanding of the biodiversity present, with ‘Guardian’ installation sites chosen to detect illegal activities and monitor biodiversity.

Project significance and description

To date, the Italy project has collected 272,452 recordings from 72 sites in our Arbimon platform.

The combination of manual validation and pattern-matching models have resulted in 47 bird species being detected. The data has identified one endangered species – the Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata). No endemic species have been found in the dataset, but 32 species are resident and 15 migratory.

Project Partners: Huawei Italy, WWF Italy

A few of the species that have been monitored:

Click the link to listen to a sound sample of the Eurasian Green-woodpecker.

Click the link to listen to a sound sample of the Eurasian Curlew.

Click the link to listen to a sound sample of the Long-tailed Tit.

Further reading

Click the following links to find out more about the work of Rainforest Connection and to learn more about the Italy TECH4ALL project.

Read more about the projects in which Rainforest Connection is partnership with Huawei and other local partners to protect threatened ecosystems under the Huawei TECH4ALL initiative:

Rainforests and forests [Primary objective]

• Costa Rica, Osa Peninsula [anti-logging, bioacoustics monitoring of the spider monkey]
• Chile, Nahuelbuta [bioacoustics monitoring of the Darwin’s fox]
• Philippines, Palawan Rainforest [anti-logging, illegal activities]
• Greece, Aoos Gorge Greece [anti-poaching, anti-logging]

Forest, Wetlands & Oceans [Primary objective]

• Italy, Burano, Ortbetello & Astroni Crater [anti-poaching, illegal activities, bioacoustics monitoring]
• Austria, Lake Neusiedl National Park [bioacoustics monitoring of wading birds & freshwater ponds]
• Ireland, Cork [bioacoustics monitoring of cetaceans: whales, dolphins & porpoises]

Disclaimer: Any views and/or opinions expressed in this post by individual authors or contributors are their personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Huawei Technologies.