Wildlife Conservation by detection and Tracking of animals through image processing

ABSTRACT Threatened by habitat loss, poaching, pollution and other factors, wildlife species across the globe are declining in number at an alarming rate. Wildlife Conservation Society have been monitoring endangered wildlife populations for more than 100 years. For decades, traditional capture and tag methods have been a primary tool, but they are not the most efficient when dealing with large animals and animals in remote locations. The computer vision technology may revolutionize the way endangered wildlife in remote areas of the world are counted and monitored. The ability to identify individual animals is a prerequisite for many questions in behavioral ecology, cognitive research, conservation monitoring, and wildlife epidemiology. With the increasing availability of remote audiovisual recording devices, such as camera or video traps, standardized data collection has become much easier, in particular in the wild. Yet there are few techniques available to rapidly process the biologically relevant information contained in the data gathered.