In Nepal, an AI learned to listen to deer — so villagers know when a tiger is near

In the community forests beside Nepal's Bardiya National Park — home to a record national tiger population of 429 — people have always read the forest by ear: when chital deer bark their alarm calls, a tiger or leopard is near. A peer-reviewed pilot, published in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, taught an AI to do the same. Ten solar-powered listening units, costing about $60 each, spent three months in Dalla Community Forest, and their alerts matched what forest guard Thenghchu Tharu, 60, found on the ground. 'It matched exactly,' he said. 'We would tell people there is a tiger there and not to go.' The pilot has ended, but the proof stands: as co-author Casey Anderson puts it, the computer was taught 'something those people already understood.'

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: tech innovation