Tech 4 Conservation

The Problem

Engineers are unaware of their potential to contribute to conservation efforts. There is a lack of opportunities or projects presented to engineers to impact conservation, however engineering solutions are being pursued for species monitoring, invasive species reduction, human-wildlife conflict, and reintroduction of endangered species.

Our Proposal

To expose engineers to conservation, a novel conservation course will be developed that allows engineering students to contribute their skills to wildlife conservation projects. They will be educated in conservation practices and be given the opportunity to communicate with and be mentored by wildlife conservation experts.

We Assume that...

We assume that engineers want to make a difference in conservation

We assume that we have a diverse set of engineering disciplines to account for the disciplinary portions of our project

We assume that students will continually participate in our class and projects

New technology can help with a variety conservation problems

Conservation experts will be willing to work alongside our students as mentors

Constraints to Overcome

Letting engineers know that engineering technology exists. For many presentations we have given about our class at local and international conferences. Many engineers have said they had no idea this field existed and wish they knew about it earlier in their degree. Through creating a model education classroom for engineering to have hands on experience in designing, building, and testing technology conservation will inspire engineerings to seek out conservation initiatives outside the class.

Current Work

Determine whether the course is teaching conservation effectively Communicate with experts to confirm international conservation projects for Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters Define experiment proposal procedure Assess Conservation Education through use of surveys and different Engineering Education Models

Current Needs

Current conservation sponsors offer ideas and opportunities, but not funding for travel and materials. We are working on a human-elephant conflict project that needs materials for funding automated feeders as well as speaker systems. We are working a python reduction in the Florida everglades with needs for materials for testing solutions to remove pythons at an accelerated rate. We need resources to help connect our Elephant Re-identification team with conservation organizations that have identified elephant photos to train the new technique we are exploring. We also need money for construction cost of the various experimental setups to create a fitness metric to evaluate giant panda reintroduction.