The ConservationDrones that Lian Pin and I have been flying in Sumatra have been taking a large number of photos of the forest in our search for orang-utan nests. Manually checking photos to find nests is a time-consuming task. By collaborating with a team from the ETH in Zurich we are now able to detect nests with the aid of object recognition. Check the current paper for more details.

A large collaboration of researchers led by Marc Ancrenaz published a paper on orang-utan terrestriality. It is published in Nature’s open access journal: Scientific Reports: http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140213/srep04024/full/srep04024.html

http://onward.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/19/drones-overhead-protecting-the-rain-forest-from-above/

David Gaveau et al. just published a new paper in PLoS ONE on the role of timber concessions for conservation of forests in Borneo: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0069887

In collaboration with the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program orang-utan research has started at the Sikundur fieldsite. This is a new fieldsite and there are opportunities for students to conduct research here. Please see the Project opportunities for students tab for more information. 

I will speak at the Zoological Society of London’s symposium  on new technologies for monitoring biodiversity on May 16-17th. I will present on the conservationdrone project that Prof. Lian Pin Koh and I founded.

Oxford University Press has published a new Primate Ecology and Conservation book Edited by Eleanor Sterling, Nora Bynum and Mary Blair.

Prof. Andrew Marshall and I have a chapter in this book on primates and plant phenology.