Why data matters to conservation with Dr. Lilian Pintea
Episode Details
Transcript
Dr. Lilian Pintea gave me a fascinating window into how he harnesses technology in his work as VP of conservation science at the Jane Goodall Institute. From leveraging Cloud and AI to digitize more than 400,000 records of chimpanzee behavior, to using satellite imagery to observe ecosystems and animals from space, Dr. Pintea says technology helps him feel more deeply connected to the nature he studies, and better able to engage local communities to support conservation efforts.
Link to full episode transcript.
Produced by Larj Media.
Microsoft/Goodall Institute Case Study
Hayete’s LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayetegallot/
Microsoft landing page
https://news.microsoft.com/podcasts/pivotal/
Jane Goodall Institute
JGI’s latest book on the Tacare approach to holistic conservation:
https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcnews/discover-the-tacare-approach-to-holistic-conservation/
Hayete Gallot
00:00
Welcome to pivotal, I am Hayete Gallot, corporate vice, president for commercial solution, areas at Microsoft. I work with customers around the globe, to transform their business, through technology at the center of every transformation are people who give technology its purpose. They are the ones who spark Visionary ideas for leveraging technology, and they have the drive to push them forward for their business while empowering others. We like to talk about technology. I love to talk about, and we often forget the heroes behind technology and Transformations you, we forget you and that's what I want to talk about through pivotal. Technology is most exciting to me when serving the needs of real people in organization when it's able to be used as a tool to fill a gap. In this case to accelerate research improve community health and safety and support conservation efforts. That's exactly what Dr. Lillian pintia the vice president of conservation science at the Jane Goodall Institute USA as done with the organization for nearly 20 years for truly revolutionary approach.
Lilian Pintea
01:16
Is the way how she approached him pansies with humbleness with deep focus and quite observation shows able to truly deeply. Observe, this.
Hayete Gallot
01:27
Animals. Jane Goodall, the renowned biologist and founder of our Institute calls, Dr. Lillian, pintia, a brilliant and Innovative scientist with a deep understanding, and respect for the people and Wildlife. He works with and one of her favorite people working with the Jane Goodall. Institute and studying chimpanzees was something doctor pintia dreamed about as a child growing up in Moldova and the former Soviet.
Lilian Pintea
01:54
Union. I love snakes and I love to explore the nearby Forest. I also love to read, so I had a chance when I was a child to read books, like Jane Goodall's books, which inspired me to become a conservation, biologist and one day, maybe work in Africa, she just opened this door to the chimpanzees. To the behavior and to day lives and through Champs actually helping all of us to open a door to ourselves and redefine that relationship between us and other animals. And nature, just inspired me so much. We're all connected to Nature, right? And in my case, it was the time spent outdoors with my father, collecting mushrooms, or fishing or camping. And of course, having the support of my parents, my mom, even though she was completely, Terrified of snakes. She was very supported to for me to follow my dreams and became a biologist. I was really fortunate to have loving parents and our community and experiences to enable me to dream and follow my dreams.
Hayete Gallot
03:04
Dr. Parenti has interest in snakes, led him to a master's degree in Zoology from Moscow State University in Russia, through his early work as a biologist, it discovered the exciting Stabilities of using satellite imagery to enhance and scale is work. This led to a lifetime passion for our nursing technology to enhance.
Lilian Pintea
03:25
Research. It became very clear to me right away. That is a biologist spending time on the ground, trying to understand the local ecosystem. Habitats creatures view from space would be truly important and valuable the Earth from space is so beautiful that every time when I was looking at these ecosystems from Case it just truly engaged. My heart in addition to gaining data just rediscovering the beauty of our planet at different scales. Looking for patterns, looking for processes, understanding what's happening, and why certain Lakes are having certain forms, or certain vegetation are found in certain places. So that was just a beautiful way as a scientist to build mine. Knowledge and understanding spatially, but that scale which I could never have done it before, just being on the.
Hayete Gallot
04:21
Ground. So, it was fortuitous. That doctor pintia met Jane Goodall in 2000 while both of them were working in Tanzania Dr. Pintia started collaborating with jgi as a graduate student there primate Center at the University of Minnesota where students were manually digitizing more than 400,000 observations for years field researchers. Has traveled through the jungle with stacks of journals pens, pencils, paper and binocular. And all this data was manually logged and physically flown to University of Minnesota in bags, by the way, all Industries face this. So, we're talking about conservationism, but in reality, every industry is paper problem, we're logging stuff manually. I mean, that's the beauty of data is the key. The effort was organized by Dr. And p**** there, To of GG, I research center and professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University.
Lilian Pintea
05:24
Dr. A it was very excited to advise a student who is interested in conservation and who is also bringing this technical skills or satellite imagery and in GIS and mobile technologies to the job of researching and the standing and conserving, chimpanzees back. Then in 2000, those were still new technologies and tools in the Field of animal behavior.
Hayete Gallot
05:48
This manual, digitization effort, was no small task in the 1960s. Jane Goodall developed protocols that have been replicated by researchers. Over the last 50 years. Creating one of the largest and longest-running mammal studies. In the world. One of the main protocols, particle, B requires the field researcher to follow a focal chimpanzee and record information. Every 15 minutes, the location of the chimpanzee. Who is in the group, what they're feeding on what type of other behaviors are happening? And some behaviors were even recorded as frequently as every two.
Lilian Pintea
06:26
Minutes. I had the chance to connect the access database of this long-term data. Imagine bringing all this data into the gis. And I remember looking at the map and this point start appearing one by one. And it took a while it was more than 400 thousand points of chimpanzee Behavior, observation, which have been collected on the ground by our amazing field researchers, digitized by this Army of students, and then the work only started for scientist because now we had the data in a form, which could clean it. Analyze it organizes, it visualizes it, and start asking and testing hypothesis and rotting models. And The.
Hayete Gallot
07:16
Statistics in those years JG, I struggled to keep up with technology to enable them to work at this scale.
Lilian Pintea
07:25
In 2000. The database which were you as actually was very simple, digitization manual digitization calls which were used. Our program was written by scientists at the computer Department of the University of Minnesota imagine that you are in the forest and you're following these chimpanzees and something happened and suddenly You have to wait 35 years for all the data to be digitized and wanted for you to have that better picture of actually what happened in that day. And then we start bringing the gis system. Geographic information systems to start mapping these data. But only recently with advances in Cloud technology face recognition, pattern, recognition that we truly started to think about bringing some new technologies to the Able which would allowed us to do this work at scale and maybe being able to catch up with this huge amount of data coming our way and that critical transformation. In my opinion was first the incredible breakthrough which we have been observing in the cloud Technologies and of course the ability now to leverage artificial intelligence algorithms and the work flows to then start. Engaging, and awry, and extracting data from images, pictures videos, scanned PDF documents, and do it reliably. That scale.
Hayete Gallot
08:55
With a fully digital searchable, archive jgi researchers can better understand and detect patterns and answer long-standing questions such as whether chimps actively teach their offspring. To ingest medicinal plants, for example young chimps it. Rough leaves that Hurt their throats to rid themselves of parasites and researchers still don't know how that skill gets transferred from their parents. The Microsoft Azure data science team work with jgi to build workflows where AI can detect specific individual chimpanzees and extract behaviors from their interaction with each other. In fact a I can detect things that the human eye would miss.
Lilian Pintea
09:41
For us reason why this is important is because From, we are missing certain behaviors or elements when we are looking at The Chimps. What's happening. That, um, so being able for the artificial intelligence to ask specific questions for point, us to specific behaviors or enabling us to ask when that particular Behavior, like, in this case, as using soft medication because they are ingesting, the sleeves, as a way to help them clean from some got intestinal parasites, and that is a learned behavior. Behavior, which they learn from watching the mothers and the way they decide to use and how this culture and behavior is actually, then communicated and shared in the community is something of great interest and importance for Behavior scientists. So we could ask questions about when certain chimps were together in different groups, where we can extract questions, what they were doing in this group. So this is still researching progress and there are many other behaviors which could be potentially extracted from this material. Once we get all our database organized and talking to each other, I think we will see an explosion of new insights into the chimp Behavior.
Hayete Gallot
10:55
Harnessing, the power of AI, gives researchers a deep understanding of the lives of the chimpanzees with less manual work, freeing them up to focus, their expertise, on more valuable work like Bill Wally. ER for example, bill is a videographer and 30-year veteran. I j GI a nice catch. Captured thousands of hours of footage media Valley audio and video intelligence which is built on Azure, makes it fast for Bill to automatically tag video footage with metadata and through Active Learning a. I can identify individual chimps based on their vocalization and in document, those behaviors. This is really important because not only can a, I tagged in document chips faster and with better accuracy bills time and expertise can be focused on more Valuable projects. This is where the technology meets the human to accelerate groundbreaking work.
Lilian Pintea
11:51
And then it engages bill and it's asking Bill. Well, it looks like this chimp, maybe this individual, but we're not sure. We also not sure if this chimp maybe is its a child where is the parent when the parent was a child? Because maybe they were very similar and it truly engages bills expertise to be used, not randomly. Li but was more driven purpose and build and is challenged to go back to his notes and actually answer some really difficult questions instead of just identifying a champ which is the system can do it very.
Hayete Gallot
12:27
Easily. How cool is this? AI is actually making Bill more effective challenging him in ways that you can be challenged before and the AI doesn't end with Cloud. Technology and digitization tools doctor pintia is working with Microsoft Project premonition and I tool using smart mosquito traps, connecting to other iot Hub. Which uses lasers to detect. The frequency of the wings of different insects they capture mosquitoes, and then use tools to extract, which animal this mosquito has been feeding on. And if those animals are carrying diseases and pathogens, these datasets are now used by communities, to help to better understand and anticipate and address Pathways for disease transmission. Action not just in trips but as well.
Lilian Pintea
13:17
Humans Azure Cloud infrastructure enabling users like us not to spend too much time and building processes and tools but quickly customizing them leveraging them deploying them and focus on what we can do best and that is working with users and decision-makers on the ground to actually use this information for better.
Hayete Gallot
13:40
Decisions. In fact, working with local community as being Critical. It's been the key to Jane Goodall's institute's. Long-term success in gombe, Tanzania, Jane, Goodall calls this, the to carry approach, which tends for to care and puts local communities in charge of preserving the natural world around them. It's an intentional collaboration between conservationist and local residents throughout Africa together, they're using their latest science and technology to find ways to balance local He needs with their surrounding.
Lilian Pintea
14:16
Ecosystems. More than 80% of biodiversity is in the hands of local communities and local indigenous people. So if you truly want to see an impact on conservation and making a difference with all this amazing data, the question is actually how to unlock this potential, for this technology with the local communities, with the decision, makers and stakeholders, which are making daily decisions as we.
Hayete Gallot
14:43
Speak. I just love this. It's not about Gigi, I did just get it. It's about how the community is going to take it and carry what they're trying to achieve. If the technology is working with the buying of local stakeholders and decision-makers it can be so much more effective to serve the goals of the community. In the long term.
Lilian Pintea
15:04
In the 1960s Jane's approach was Innovative. Not only from the animal behavior science perspective but the way how she viewed traditional knowledge, the way her, she viewed and valued local people's knowledge and the way how she integrated them into the long-term research. We realized that humans. As decision-makers are not necessarily rational information quality and accuracy is important. But what's truly even more important for decision-making for conservation is the trust in data and the ownership of decision-making process itself. So what we Is by working with local communities for all the tears. Thanks to the work was Jane started in Tanzania and 1960s and by working. So closely with local communities by working. So closely with local governments by expanding this work, not just in Tanzania, but in Uganda, they are see Republic of Congo, Senegal, we realized that in order for us to truly unlock this potential of technology and science, we need to bring the science and technology in the Making process from the.
Hayete Gallot
16:15
Beginning. So what a critical moment for jgi because they realized you can't really rely on humans, you got to have this data to inform the right decision and without establishing local trust the Jane Goodall Institute would never have been able to bring technology to the Forefront of their conservation efforts. They would be for sure great potential for expedited research and conservation work. But no practical implementation. This is what we call a network.
Lilian Pintea
16:46
Effect. We need to have a set and it shouldn't be driven by science. It should be driven by the people themselves, and they should own, they shouldn't be just engaged. They should actually own and drive decisions about their own livelihoods and about the Landscapes where science and technology is presented as tools as input, and it creates a space where communities Government officials decision makers, have a chance to have a dialogue, they have a chance to trust it. They have a chance to engage it. And when these conditions are happening, the power of technology is in the sun, in the capacity of Science and knowledge can be truly.
Hayete Gallot
17:29
Unlock. And so they said down with local communities.
Lilian Pintea
17:32
Supporting them to develop land, use plans, so they can better manage Forest to protect the watersheds to protect the water sources, but also to help them. Then, use the forest resources.
Hayete Gallot
17:44
The doctor pintia emphasizes, we should not forget the white life.
Lilian Pintea
17:48
I usually say that when we sit down with local stakeholders local communities, decision-makers government officials chimpanzees, a missing from that meeting and JJ is wrong, is to speak on behalf of the chimpanzees as well. In addition, to active listening to people's needs, and they livelihood needs and the way how they make decisions about resources as what important to them. It's all over gatien as well to bring to the table and put on the same map. What chimpanzee conservation needs are? And through that also has some levels speak also for the natural ecosystems in the forest functions.
Hayete Gallot
18:26
And if you think about it, all this data is actually giving more power to GG is voice as they're trying to represent the needs of the chimpanzees, or the community. How powerful since their mission is holistic, the need for or science and information are holistic, embracing smarty. I in data Asset Management, allows them to gather organize, share and analyze data at scale in a way that can truly support their holistic vision and Mission and employee Phi their Global impact.
Lilian Pintea
19:00
So when I, when we talk about leveraging technology for us, it means not only implementing the latest artificial intelligence face recognition algorithm to do a specific work. It's actually connecting the data with other type of data and leveraging and using it together in order to support work and achieve in order to achieve this holistic Vision.
Hayete Gallot
19:25
What's cool about this is that today they're using this data for specific purpose to more. Somebody may need to look at a different angle and it can still leverage this data. It just has a lasting impact, we learned a mind-bending statistic, 90% of all the data. In the world that has been created, has been generated in the last two years. And this has been true for the last 30 years. It's hard for the brain to comprehend, but it feels very hopeful as we think about the expanding potential to analog data as an actionable information to drive. Meaningful impact for local conservation efforts. One example of the to carry approach can be seen in the reforestation effort, near the villages among the hills around. Gombe, National Park using satellite images. Gigi, I was able to work with the community. They had a long-standing relationship with and support land. Use planning efforts with Gigi eyes, always, take approach, cutting-edge science, and tools were able to support Community Driven conservation, efforts to reverse deforestation and reduced landslides.
Lilian Pintea
20:34
What we have realized by working the oldest years with local communities. And decision-makers is that in order for people? To change their behavior. We need to connect our amazing Minds with our compassion.
Hayete Gallot
20:47
Hearts community. Members were able to compare printed out images of two maps, a tangible representation of how their land use effects shared resources and it made a difference Farmers voluntarily. You relocated their Farms communities. Were incentivized to produce other less, harmful, Agriculture, and slowly the streams returned the trees. Move back and the landslides became less frequent GG. I really put people at the center of this conservation efforts in the empowered them to use geographical information system technology as a transparent framework to work towards a common goal. In this one is a great example. Technology with that purpose doesn't lead anywhere they had a common goal and you just enable them.
Lilian Pintea
21:36
Because we implemented it with te karere every farmer realized that They personal sacrifice will benefit, the community, will benefit the future generation, their children. And I, when I look at those heels again, and I see this Forest coming back, it's truly gives me hope because if we can, replicate similar factors and conditions, if we can not only have access and use technology but the way how he used it, if we can replicate those factors then there are so many places around the World and in our own communities which would benefit from such an approach. So that gives me hope that gives me the energy and inspiration to keep going and try to share those insights and Lessons Learned and you know continue learning about new technology and tools but continuously bringing those Technologies on the ground and working together to convert them into meaningful actionable.
Hayete Gallot
22:36
Information. You can read more about Jane Goodall and duct tape in Tia's allistic approach. Ch2 conservation in their new book, local voices, vocal choices, the Takara approach to community LED conservation as for what's giving Dr. Pintia hope in the future. It tells us about jgies long-running youth program roots and shoots.
Lilian Pintea
22:58
Roots. Of course. It's, it's Anna ground. They form a foundation. They reach deep. They provide that access to nutrients and resources deep underground but then shoots, I believe until they're so small. And maybe gentle, they can break through the most the hardest barriers out there and together can provide change. And if the group The Roots and shoots groups can Indian five projects one, maybe one for the animals, one for the people, one for the environment and do something about, they will soon find out that this issues which they address, I interconnected, and they will find Hope through action. And this is, It's All About, it's about inspiring. By hiring individuals to take action on behalf of animal planet's and environment on behalf of the.
Hayete Gallot
23:49
(communities) roots and shoots has spread to nearly 100 countries and is established a network of young people who carry, Jen's conservation, ethic and holistic approach to making the world a better place for people animals and the environment. Dr. Pintia has come a long way from studying snakes in his use in Moldova but his interest in the intersection of technology and conservation as been And duct tape in his journey is really inspirational, and by the way, just illustrates anybody can take advantage of the resources, we make available to nonprofits, so that they can, you can drive your own results.
Lilian Pintea
24:25
The conservation biology is a field is relatively new 30, 40 years ago, when we were just started to be conservation, biologist I became conservation biologist because I didn't want it to be just an ecologist, they wanted to be part of addressing the biodiversity crisis with Has real solutions in the real world. And at that time, the idea was that well, as a scientist, a bad thing, which you can do is, take out your white academic coat and leave it in the lab and take a bus to the real world and sit down understand how the decision makers make decisions and then find out what the questions are then, come back in the lab, put your coat back, develop Solutions, and then go back and bring the solutions to them. We all understand that, the problems which we did, In regarding our climate, our by diversity the emerging, pandemics and diseases are so the scale of these challenges are so large and will require the systemic changes that in order to achieve that we cannot do it without technology, but in warded, for that technology to truly have a chance to impact change in a positive way, it has to be brought in into the hands of the decision makers themselves. Herbs of the people who make those decisions on a daily basis and in case of biodiversity and conservation, the local community is a local. Stakeholders is essential.
Hayete Gallot
25:50
The tip in Tianjin Goodall Institute modeled, how to effectively integrate technology, into their workflow, to enhance their research. And in that process, they have also provided responsive transparent system to communities on the ground, which enables them to have a lasting impact, their dedication to engagement and Trust from Community is a great example for what is possible for not just chimpanzee and conservation work, but improving the individual lives health of communities and the planet technology is at its best. When it's enabling us to do our best work and this story about the Jane Goodall Institute actually fills me with optimism to see what the latest Cloud technology can do and how they can be leveraged to protect the biodiversity of our planet doctor. Pintia used the phrase connecting brains. With hearts and I just love that. So I am going to keep that phrase top of mine and think about how we can constantly be improving our tools to keep people to keep you at the center of all we do. Thank you for listening to pivotal. I would love to hear your story and your pivotal moment. So don't hesitate to follow me and share on LinkedIn. Audience information is also available in the show notes. Our show is produced by large media, that's La RJ media, special thanks to lenient and our partners that we Communications.
