The Internet of Animals and Earth’s Digital Twin

The Kays lab’s vision for wildlife conservation focuses on animal population size and connectivity. To realize its conservation goals first requires annual estimates of animal abundance and their trends to know which species—and where—are most in need of help. Second, species-specific measures of habitat connectivity between these populations are needed to ensure animal movement continues to provide genetic exchange and to allow colonization of new habitats as the planet warms. Both metrics need to account for the rapid changes from development and climate change, as well as the varied effects of human recreationalists and hunters. Just a few years ago, proposing these measures for all wildlife across North America would have been absurd—but now it is possible. Camera traps, hunters, Native communities, naturalists, and animal tracking are providing unprecedented data about wildlife. Satellites return live information about the landscapes and climates animals are moving through, and new analytical approaches (AI and others) allow the combination of these with animal data in population and movement models. Linking big data, live data, and real time analytics into an Internet of Animals will help us build a Digital Twin of planet Earth that includes mobile animals and the ecosystem processes they support.