Open dialogues with our main partner, the Government of Seychelles during every stage of the project ensured that changes and amendments could be easily made with their input. For example, field locations where easily amended as a result of bad weather, ensuring no time was wasted while at sea. Furthermore, a clear expectation of sample collection and updates during the expedition meant that Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) inspections could be made on arrival back into port, expediting the export permits, and thereby helping to facilitate the Government to fulfil their regulatory requirements.

It is not straight-forward to build trust. It can take time, skill, and resources, particularly finance and personnel. Nekton ensured that early engagement with the Government of Seychelles and Seychellois stakeholders began a year prior to the actual start of the Seychelles-Nekton field expedition. This allowed ample time to start building connections and relationships with the stakeholders and partners based in Seychelles. The Government of Seychelles gathered other locally based partners and stakeholders to build and frame a joint agenda of needs that would inform the research during the Seychelles-Nekton Expedition which took place in 2019. Co-production of the expedition included organising workshops to identify research locations, defining the pertinent research questions along with determining the stakeholders’ interest in leading specific projects.

Years of research and conservation practices have not only stressed the importance of biodiversity data but also revealed the flaws of current workflow, ranging from inefficient data management, lack of data integration, to limited public-accessible data applications. Moreover, such workflow is mainly man-powered and often involves a lot of repetitive work, taking up huge amount of conservationists’ time.

Following the rapid development of technology, we have gradually realized the potential of technology to bring solutions to our “pain points” for long. In order to utilize technology tools in places in most needs, a systematic review and analysis of the current workflow was conducted to identify bottlenecks with high priorities and the possible solutions. The contemplation began in May 2018 and was materialized starting from Jun 2019 after potential technical partners emerged. Based on the systematic workflow analysis and close partnership, we made a step-by-step plan, aiming at developing modules one by one, considering our limited resource and manpower (e.g., from community-based camera trap monitoring assistant app, to BiA tool, to citizen science data visualization platform, to camera trap data management system).    

To enable automatic and instant biodiversity impact assessment enquiry, the BiA tool has been developed to facilitate enquiry services for land planners and other interested parties via Azure platform. The BiA tool works by overlaying the enquiry site or region (or existing construction projects) with multiple geographic layers including species distribution and protected area range to investigate if the site or region is within certain distance (e.g., 3 km, 5 km) from and may cause impact on endangered species habitat and/or protected areas. The assessment reports illustrate ecological and environmental risks of construction projects for decision-makers and could hopefully promotes them to take biodiversity into consideration.

A brief timeline of the BiA tool:

• Apr-Jun 2020: team formation, requirement communication, system development plan
• Jul-Sept 2020: tool development
• Oct 2020: trial test, application and dissemination
• (in preparation) Apr-Sept 2022: system upgrade

To accelerate camera trap data workflows, an online data management system along with app-based tools and AI image recognition is being developed supported by technical partners, which consists of:

• Community-based camera trap monitoring assistant app: the app allows local monitors to automatically record the time and GPS location of camera trap setup/pickup, saving the cumbersome process of collecting data from local monitors and manual data entry. (blueprint: Jun 2019, development: Oct 2019-Feb 2020, trial and use: Mar-Oct 2020)
• AI image recognition models: AI models help detect animals and identify species in camera trap photos, which greatly reduce the number of photos that need human identification and enhance data processing efficiency.
  • A series of AI models has been trained and/or tested with technical partners, including PU & PKU ResNet18 model (2018), MegaDetector (test only, 2020), MindSpore YOLOv3 model (2021).
• Online data management platform: camera trap information collected via the app along with photos are upload to a structured cloud database. The data management platform not only supports species identification via AI and human, but also enables global data search and statistics reports. (blueprint: Apr-Aug 2021, development: Sept 2021-Jun 2022, trial and use: Jul 2022)

In order to commit Research-Practice Teams in the Heritage Place Lab on a voluntary basis, it was necessary to establish the production of tangible outputs that would be useful for individuals, institutions and heritage places. The Heritage Place Lab proposed to develop and publish the research agendas resulting from the process, the publication of a special issue on the Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development (Emerald) which is an important step for academics, and the production of Nature-Culture solutions to be published on PANORAMA. 

The World Heritage Leadership Programme (WHLP) released an open call for applications for Research-Practice Teams interested in working on World Heritage management issues collaboratively in the experimental Heritage Place Lab. The Research-Practice Teams had to be composed of a group of researchers (2-4), and a  group of site managers (2-4). The research group could include faculty members, post-doctoral and graduate students, based in one or more research institutions, covering cultural heritage and/or natural heritage fields. The group of site managers could include 2-4 members involved in the management of one World Heritage property, which could belong to one or more institutions (managing authorities, municipality, community among others), and who were part of the World Heritage site management system. The WHLP encouraged Research-Practice Teams to work cross-regionally and in multi and interdisciplinary groups, including considering gender and intergenerational balance as priorities. Research-Practice Teams had to commit to working together for the duration of the Heritage Place Lab pilot phase and its follow-up activities, (including in between the 6 incubator online workshops).

The initial attempt at creating a PVC-lined pond failed because of the lack of aeration and/or filtration and concomittent volume of cottonwood leaves that fell into the stagnant pond in the fall.  Once power was brought to the site, concrete ponds with redundant aeration and filtration systems were added.

When it was announced that the Galo tract would be developed into a residential area it concerned parties from multiple sectors. Conservationists and bat scientists saw this plan as creating a human-wildlife conflict where there was not one previously, presenting threats to the health and wellbeing of both nature and the human populations. Local government, in particular City Council member Ron Nirenberg, had expressed concerns about the plan mainly focused on the nearby aquifer and the region’s drinking water. To fully assess the major trade-offs of the residential development plan, local government took the step of unifying diverse partners and their cross-cutting interests. By finding common ground in the end goal of preserving the area surrounding the Bracken Bat Cave, stakeholders from diverse sectors were able to transform their individual concerns into a large-scale mutual interest.

Co-created transdisciplinary approaches using methods such as interviews, storytelling, participatory mapping, theatre, playful activities and music can contribute to air pollution awareness and solutions to improved air quality. This approach accounts for local knowledge, cultural practices and priorities of the intended recipients of interventions, thereby making these interventions and respective air pollution abatement policies more effective and inclusive.