listening to save wildlife: lessons learnt from use of
TRANSCRIPT
Listening to Save Wildlife: Lessons Learnt from Use of Acoustic Technology by a Species Recovery Team
Jessica L Oliver
Queensland University
of Technology, Brisbane,
Australia
Margot Brereton
Queensland University
of Technology, Brisbane,
Australia
David M. Watson
Charles Sturt University
Albury Wodonga,
Australia
Paul Roe
Queensland University
of Technology, Brisbane,
Australia
ABSTRACT
An increasing variety of technologies are being developed to
support conservation of endangered wildlife; however,
comparatively little attention has been devoted to their
design. We undertook three years of ethnographic fieldwork
and design research with the recovery team of an endangered
Australian bird (the Eastern bristlebird) to explore the team’s
culture and practices, as well as their perspectives on
including collection and analysis of environmental acoustic
recordings into their conservation praxis. Through thematic
analysis, we identified the team’s collective goals, culture,
conservation activities, and technology use. We found that acoustic technologies have promise for supporting
conservation of furtive and vocal Eastern bristlebirds.
Trialing acoustic technologies also revealed that the team had
strong interest in their use. We identified knowledge gaps,
time constraints, and technology aversion as barriers to be
overcome with future interaction design research. We offer
an initial set of practical guidelines for designing
technologies to support conservation.
Author Keywords
Cooperative work; wildlife; conservation; acoustics
CSS Concepts
• Human-centered computing • Collaborative and social
computing
INTRODUCTION Emerging technologies offer promise to support wildlife
conservation, but only if conservationists and technology
creators work in close cooperation [31]. Motion-triggered
cameras, autonomous acoustic recorders, and instrumented
drones have been appropriated to find and monitor wildlife [44]. However, the growing suite of environmental sensing
technologies calls for design research to investigate how they
can better assist conservation efforts. We focus on acoustic
sensing technologies, given their ability to record for long
durations, to find and learn about rare and furtive wildlife
that vocalise or generate other sounds, without much human
intrusion into habitat. For example, acoustic technologies
have been critical in the re-discovery and subsequent
ecological investigations of Australia’s elusive night parrots
[41]. With autonomous acoustic sensors becoming
increasingly efficient, cost-effective, and portable [e.g. 26],
collection of recordings is relatively easy. Analysis of resultant data, however, is challenging, requiring substantial
technical and biological expertise [23], with automatic
recognition techniques also facing numerous practical
challenges that hinder often their use [48].
Conservationists themselves are often scientists trained in the
scientific reductionist-deductive paradigm, but with a
practical bent. As a practically oriented field that addresses
wicked problems, conservation can also benefit from design-
abductive thinking that explores in a divergent manner before
converging to development of solutions. Designers have the
skills to study intersections of people, actions, context, and
technology [8], which can reduce barriers to using acoustics, by improving usefulness, usability, and scalability, to
increase support of conservation efforts [e.g. 15, 17, 39, 42].
One species likely to benefit from new acoustic technologies
is the vocal, ground-dwelling, secretive, Eastern bristlebird
[59] (Figure 1). This Australian endemic is estimated to have
a total population of less than 2,500 birds.
Figure 1. An Eastern bristlebird — although rarely seen, their
loud voice makes them readily detected with acoustic sensors
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We focus on the geographically isolated, critically
endangered northernmost bristlebird population that lives
among tussock grasses of health woodlands [59]. This
northern population of Eastern bristlebirds is thought to
consist of less than 100 birds.
We conducted a three-year ethnographic study, and
undertook design research to trial acoustic technologies, in
order to understand how the geographically dispersed
Northern Working Group of the Eastern Bristlebird Recovery
Team (hereafter referred to as the “team”) completes
conservation work. We explored their goals, motivations, and
activities. Adopting a participant-observer approach [30, 32],
the lead author interviewed team members, attended
gatherings, cooperatively trialed use of acoustic technologies
(i.e. deploying acoustic sensors and analysing acquired
audio), and contributed to team work. We conducted
thematic analysis on interview and observational data. Five themes were identified that characterized our understanding
of team perspectives and engagement with acoustic
technologies: 1) Team conservation goals; 2) Interest in
using acoustics to learn; 3) Knowledge sharing; 4) Existing
& future networks; and 5) Time for technology?
The acoustic technology trials revealed potential utility in
supporting the recovery team in standardising their
knowledge on bristlebird calls and bird associated
behaviours. Additionally, these activities highlighted barriers
that translated to important system design needs. An
additional learning opportunity to strengthen conservation efforts by the recovery team was also created through this
research. Assessing each theme within the broader context of
the team’s work and their experiences with trying acoustic
technologies, we developed a set of guidelines for technology
design to support saving the Eastern bristlebird. The
guidelines comprise five pillars to consider when designing
conservation technology: 1) Discern goals; 2) Train &
engage to improve skill; 3) Facilitate information exchange;
4) Extend beyond the team; and 5) Design for engagement,
usability, & impact.
This local study identifies practical ways in which acoustic
technologies could improve conservation of a secretive bird, while identifying barriers to broader application of acoustic
technologies in environmental science. These guidelines are
intended to inform design and use of acoustic technologies.
BACKGROUND
Supporting Environmental Monitoring with Technology
Technological advances have provided conservationists with
a new suite of tools to support saving species [44, 63]. Global
sensing technologies, for example, such as Earth observation
satellites, can provide temporal climatic parameter data (e.g.
temperature and precipitation) to model and assess species
vulnerability to climate change [43]. Data from aircraft
equipped with regional sensing technologies can now also
allow conservationists to evaluate population densities for
large species such as emperor penguins [21]. Professional
ecologists and citizen scientists alike can collect data using in
situ sensing devices, such as mobile phones (e.g. the
iNaturalist application [64]), drones (e.g. sea turtles [50],
camera traps (e.g. forest wildlife [1]), environment DNA
(e.g. marine fishes [60]), and acoustic sensors (e.g. forest elephants [35]). Electronic tracking devices can also be
attached to animals to investigate movements, and then
strategically prioritize habitat protection [7, 13, 24]. Such
technologies rapidly generate large datasets, which require
collaboration and additional technological solutions to
harmonize, explore, and analyse to conserve nature
effectively [23, 50, 63].
Multidisciplinary collaborations and partnerships are
identified as crucial for maximizing impacts of developing,
using, and sustaining technology to support conservation [9,
23, 29, 31, 63]. Existing and emerging technologies offer
designers, conservationists, computer scientists, and citizen scientists new opportunities to collaboratively overcome
challenges and advance efforts to save species [47].
Co-Exploring Acoustics is Fruitful & Promising
By exploring how people interact with acoustic technologies,
designers can provide strategies to improve usefulness,
usability, efficiency, and scalability. Exploring how citizen
scientists used a smartphone application to try to find rare
cicadas via inaudible sounds, for example, revealed
technology-work practice tensions that future designs can
address [39]. Examining practices and interests of birders has
provided insights for designing online platforms to interact
with environmental audio recordings [15]. Designers have
also learned that visualisations of audio can elicit birder
knowledge [42], as well as reveal opportunities and challenges related to collaboratively making sense of
acoustic data [17]. Such studies highlight the power in
designers collaboratively exploring acoustics with people
interested in biodiversity and sounds of nature.
Additionally, technical systems have been developed to
investigate environmental acoustic recordings. Citizen
scientists have classified calls of bats and whales via the
Zooniverse platform [16]. Other systems explore live sound
transmission of audio for bird surveys [54], rapid and
automated detection of invasive species [51], manual
annotation of wildlife vocalisations [37], and visualizing
years of audio from ecosystems [62]. Such systems have potential to ease data handling and extract information from
acoustic recordings.
Most research involving wildlife sensing via acoustics
explores how people interact with the acoustic data, or how
to detect and visualise animal calls. Conservation, however,
is far more complex than simply finding where animals
persist. It also involves diverse activities, needs, actions, and
evaluation [3]. Opportunities likely exist for design research
to support conservation with acoustics, and other methods, in
far more diverse ways than just locating species, but first
understanding the needs of conservation teams is essential.
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Increasing Impact of Acoustic Work via Design
Environmental audio recordings are relatively
straightforward to collect; however, analysing acoustic data
is often a significant challenge. Annotating acoustic data
manually is time consuming and subjective [23]. In instances
where the species is rare vocalizations may be undescribed or
poorly known [e.g., 28]. People with knowledge of the calls
can then be taxed with analysing large amounts of data. Even
when calls are well known, analysing recordings often entails using open source audio editing software, such as Audacity
[4], which was the case for the surreptitious night parrot [28].
Such software, however, is generally overly complex for this
application, and has poor support for relevant functions, such
as searching audio recordings efficiently or collaboratively.
When the public has been recruited to classify audio or
images via an online platform, projects with audio had lower
participation rates than those with images, though reasons for
this have yet to be explored [16]. Regardless, large datasets
of manually annotated data are often required to train
algorithms for automatic detection of specific species [reviewed in 58]. All these factors result in limited amounts
of data being analysed, which restricts how effectively
acoustics can support conservation. If designers understand
who uses acoustic technology, how, when, and where, then
future technology can engage more people with diverse
conservation activities to help species and make ecological
discoveries [46, 47].
METHODS
Establishing Relationships with the Conservation Team
Prior to this study, the lead author was aware of the
bristlebird recovery team, and their efforts to save the
northern-most population of birds. She had acquired this
knowledge while serving with a team member on a local
committee for Southern Queensland, which is a branch of the
national not-for-profit organisation known as BirdLife
Australia [5]. After initial discussions with the team member
about acoustic sensing, the lead author was invited to present acoustic sensing and design research ideas to the team. The
team readily agreed that the lead author could observe their
work, interview some of them, and cooperatively exploring
acoustic technologies. Involvement with the team is typically
by invitation only, with the expectation that the invitee will
bring needed skills, resources, and/or knowledge to conduct
conservation work. Membership, meeting invites, and
information sharing are restricted in the interest of protecting
sensitive details about birds and stakeholder relationships.
Having a background and reputation in conservation and
avian ecology helped the lead author to establish rapport.
Being invited to attend meetings and outings, the lead author observed team interactions and discussions. The lead author
also demonstrated commitment by assisting with tasks, such
as team grant writing efforts. This led the team to share
information with greater openness. Inclusion was evident
when team members began describing the lead author as a
team member during public lectures and interviews.
While second, third, and fourth authors did not engage
directly with the species recovery team, each played a pivotal
role in providing respective expertise in Human-Computer
Interaction design, ecology, and computer science in relation
to collecting, managing, and processing acoustic recordings.
Diverse Team Contributions & Data Analysis
The lead author was a participant observer during this 3-year
study, which combined an ethnographic study with
introducing acoustic sensors to the team, deploying them together, and exploring the recorded acoustic data. Observing
and working closely with members of the recovery team
allowed for building rapport, understanding context, and
developing empathy from shared experiences [30]. We chose
an ethnographic approach, as this is a powerful means to
understand practices and “opens up the play of possibilities
for design” [2, p. 151].
Nine core members of the recovery team participated in
different ways as time, professional roles, and knowledge
allowed (Table 1). When other members and visitors
attended meetings, their contributions were opportunistically included with permission. Photographs were taken with
permission for people to remain identifiable.
ID Role and Data Sources
TM1 Environmental consultant: Meetings, lecture, email,
interview, data review (paper and audio)
TM2 NGO natural resource coordinator: Meetings,
email, interview, wild sensor deployment (2015,
2017), co-data review (online)
TM3 Gov natural resource manager: Meetings, lecture,
email, interview, data review (online remotely)
TM4 Ecology PhD student: Meetings, 2 lectures, email,
interview, documents, data review (paper & audio)
TM5 Sanctuary manager: Meetings, interview, data
review (paper & audio)
TM6 &
TM7
Gov natural resource manager & coordinator:
Meetings, email, joint interview (as requested)
TM8 Lead Bird Keeper: Meetings, email, documents,
talked while deploying sensors at aviaries (2016)
TM9 Lead Bird Keeper: Lecture, talked while deploying
sensors at aviaries (2015)
Table 1. Summary of team member participation
This study analysed a subset of a data corpus exploring how
to design engaging acoustics-focused technologies for citizen
science and conservation. The data included in this study
represents a rich suite of information gathered through
interviews, group meetings, diverse written materials, and
both field- and computer-based activities, shown in Table 2. Due to the sensitivity of information discussed during
meetings and activities, only interviews were audio recorded.
Following the thematic analysis methods of Braun and
Clarke [10], we began by inductively and systematically
coding interview transcripts (which sometimes included
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discussion of non-online audio review trials) and
observational notes from gatherings. Other materials,
including sensor deployment observations; notes from
reviews of acoustic recordings online; and digital materials
(i.e. meeting documents, reports, and manuals created by the team), were reviewed to supplement, develop, and further
refine codes. The themes were then identified in relation to
existing practices, team conservation goals, how acoustic
sensing could support team conservation efforts, and barriers
to appropriating technology for conservation. The lead author
did all coding for consistency, using NVIVO software. The
second author viewed data, codes, and themes, suggesting
refinements throughout the analysis process. Our qualitative
exploratory approach aimed to investigate diverse team
member perspectives to inform development of computer
systems for review and analysis of acoustic data.
Source Date Range* Data Source Details
Gatherings 7/2016–5/2018
(Ongoing)
Participated in 6 of 10
meetings, observed 5 lectures
(gave 3 lectures)
Interviews 8–9/2016 Conducted semi-structured
interviews (70 to 120-min.
non-online audio trials)
Sensor
Deployment
5/2015–6/2017
(For details see
Table 3)
Cooperatively deployed
aviary sensors; trained for
TM2 for wild habitat
deployments, & examined
audio & datasheets
Analysis of
audio online
6/2015–9/2017
(Intermittently)
10/2016–5/2017
Annotated 50 hours of aviary
data to learn calls; Cooperated
with TM1 to analyse audio
online
Documents
generated &
community
outreach
4/2015–2/2019
(Ongoing)
Reviewed emails, meeting
docs, & 3 team-generated
reports; Co-wrote 2 grant
applications & 2 articles
*Dates denoted using numerical notation where 5/2016–
6/2017 refers to the period May 2016 to June 2017, inclusive
Table 2. Data sources & lead author participation in activities
Deploying Acoustic Sensors Cooperatively
We cooperatively deployed sensors with team members to
gain an understanding of the team’s 1) equipment use, 2)
rationale for sensor placement and recording times, and 3)
aspirations for learning with acoustics. We provided sensor
equipment, hardware programming (e.g. setting recording
schedules), training, written instructions, and paper
datasheets to team members to deploy at Currumbin Wildlife
Sanctuary (CWS) aviaries and three wild habitats (Table 3).
The lead author co-deployed recorders at aviaries with bird keepers TM8 and TM9 in different years (Table 1, Figure 2),
and visited aviaries opportunistically (e.g. for meetings and
interviews) to learn more about sanctuary operations,
personnel, and bristlebirds. Once trained to use sensors at the
acoustics lab, TM2 coordinated and deployed sensors in the
wild with local stakeholders, given pre-existing relationships
and permissions with landholders and park managers (Tables
1 & 3). Observations were noted, such as sensor deployment
experiences, placement decisions, and informal knowledge.
Deployment Site Deployment period No. of sensors
Currumbin Wildlife
Sanctuary aviaries
28 May – 04 Jun 2015
15 Sep – 24 Sep 2016
1 sensor
2 sensors
Mount Barney 07 Sep – 19 Oct 2015 4 sensors
Spicers Gap 03 Sep – 06 Oct 2015 4 sensors
West Lamington 03 Sep – 15 Sep 2015
06 Jun – 22 Jun 2017
4 sensors
2 sensors
Table 3. Summary of sensor deployments
Figure 2. Cooperative aviary deployment of acoustic sensors
Exploring Acoustic Data Collaboratively
We cooperatively reviewed acoustic recordings with some
team members to more deeply understand team member
work and knowledge, as well as to identify opportunities
acoustic recordings afford and challenges with analysing
data. Specifically, we sought to learn 1) what team members
know about bristlebird behaviours and calls, and 2) how team
members interact with acoustic visuals and audio. All team members were invited to review the acoustic recordings, and
five of the nine participants opted to do so (Table 1).
To gain familiarity with bristlebird calls herself, lead author
listened to over 50 hours of audio from bristlebird breeding
aviaries. While listening, she also annotated and tagged calls
in visualizations that she suspected where bristlebirds, for
later use in audio-review activities with participants. These
visualizations of audio data, known as spectrograms, are
plots of frequency against time, with darkness indicating
amplitude (i.e. loudness) of an acoustic event (Figure 3).
Figure 3. A spectrogram of aviary audio [horizontal x-axis: time
= 30 seconds; vertical y-axis: frequency = 0 to 11 kHz]
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Following an exploratory approach, we created a variety of
customized, duration-flexible activities for the team to
complete with this data. Activities were designed to elicit
diverse engagement experiences and bristlebird knowledge
indicative of the team. The activities allowed each team member to engage with audio recordings in ways relevant to
their respective background and team role. We learned
during initial meetings and emails that team members often
defer to TM1 as the expert in identifying bristlebird calls, due
to TM1s extensive experience identifying their calls during
field surveys. TM1 reviewed acoustic recordings to 1)
moderate 100 of the most common call variations the lead
author found and annotated, 2) elicit TM1’s knowledge of
bristlebirds and their call behaviours, and 3) explore TM1’s
engagement with analysing audio by sound and sight. We
requested that TM1 jot down descriptive notes on printouts
of spectrograms (Figure 4). During exploration of audio we
asked TM1, and later others in person, to think-aloud [19].
Figure 4. Example calls tagged by TM1 [horizontal x-axis: each
call 1 to 3 seconds; vertical y-axis: 0 to 11 kHz]
Knowledge we gained from an activity informed designs of
subsequent activities. For example, some calls identified as
bristlebirds by TM1 were incorporated into activities for
TM4 and TM5 that entailed then reviewing printed spectrograms and audio clips. Their respective activities were
designed to assess whether they each recognised bristlebird
calls and to explore their interactions with spectrograms and
audio (e.g. Figures 3 & 4). We observed TM2 explore data
online (i.e. spectrograms and associated audio), describing
experiences, navigation, rationale, and decisions aloud. These
activities informed the creation of written instructions, so that
TM3 could remotely explore acoustic recordings (e.g. listen,
annotate, and tag) at their leisure. We provided TM3 an
online spreadsheet to record progression through audio,
reflect experiences (e.g. interest, usefulness, and difficulty),
make inquiries, and get feedback.
FINDINGS
Our data analysis identified five major themes that highlight the interplay between existing conservation work, potential
of acoustics, and barriers to using acoustic technologies for
conservation. Each of the following themes will be unpacked
in this section: 1) Team conservation goals; 2) Interest in
using acoustics to learn; 3) Knowledge sharing; 4) Existing
& future networks, and 5) Time for technology?
Theme 1: Team Conservation Goals
This theme provides an understanding of the Eastern
Bristlebird Recovery Team Northern Working Group’s
conservation culture and practices. It highlights the team’s
passion for saving bristlebirds, which drives collective goals
and their process of iteratively setting interim goals for work.
Goals Driven by Passion to Saving the Species
The goals to save the threatened species are mandated by the
federal government, however, these goals have been
advocated for and developed by passionate and informed conservationists. Each team member conveyed a passion and
urgency to ensure Eastern bristlebirds don’t slip into
extinction, as TM1’s reflected, “They’re so close to just
dropping off the perch. I want to turn them around”. The
team is united by a common overarching aim for Eastern
bristlebirds, which TM6 described as “[To] get them back out
there to persisting by themselves…” which TM7 elaborated,
“it's about viability of the population in the long term,
increasing the numbers so that they can survive stochastic
events… That’s a sustainable long-term population in NSW
and South East Queensland…”. Team members value bristlebirds, which TM3 mused, “It’s a really unique little
bird. You’ve got to admire it for its tenacity.”
Each Stage Involves Iterative & Innovative Interim Goals
We learned there are several stages to bristlebird recovery. TM4 shared during a lecture that once remaining wild
bristlebirds are located, there are four stages to their
successful conservation, including: 1) figure out what the
species needs, 2) understand their threats, 3) develop a
solution, and then 4) implement the solution before it’s too
late to save the species. As with other conservation initiatives
[3], stages of bristlebird recovery are iterative rather than
following a stepwise or linear fashion, and interim goals are
developed and regularly adapted with each stage. The team is
innovative, simultaneously seeking out expertise,
implementing and augmenting a slew of existing activities, and trying new tools to improve conservation outcomes (i.e.
related to activities such as captive breeding, genetics
analysis, reintroduction, habitat modelling and restoration,
and field surveys with a detector dog). Initial openness to
exploring acoustic technology also reflects this propensity.
Theme 2: Interest in Using Acoustics to Learn
The team conveyed a strong interest in exploring the
potential of acoustics to support their work in a variety of
ways. Here we highlight several ways that people expressed
interest in deploying sensors into aviaries and wild habitats,
as well as in exploring recorded audio.
Dedicating Time & Energy in Deploy Sensors to Learn
One clear indication of interest came from TM2, who rarely
has opportunities to conduct bristlebird field work. TM2 took
it upon themselves to collect equipment from us and
coordinate deployment with local stakeholders interested in
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bristlebird recovery efforts on two separate occasions (Tables
1 & 3). This represented investment both in time and effort as
it involved obtaining landholder permissions, training others
to use sensors, liaising with TM1 for habitat and call
expertise, and coordinating managers of fire and weed control activities. Deploying sensors also shows dedication as
it requires energy to hike carrying heavy equipment up steep,
rugged, heavily vegetated terrain where bristlebirds have
been known to live (Table 3 and Figure 2).
Recording a Menagerie of Calls to Understand Captive Birds
There was great support and interest in deploying acoustic
equipment at aviaries where captive bristlebirds are bred.
With the approval from the sanctuary manager, TM5, each
lead bird keeper, TM9 and later TM8, cooperatively
deployed sensors with the lead author (Figure 2) and checked
sensors through the course of the deployment periods (Table
3). Both keepers hoped to learn new bristlebird calls that
could support captive breeding and release of captive birds.
Recording Nature in Hopes of Capturing Calls of the Wild
There was great interest in using acoustics to validate
previous findings and confirm suspicions. Prior to our
involvement with the Eastern Bristlebird Recovery Team, a
detector dog had accompanied field surveys at two of the wild habitat sites. The dog indicated picking up the scent of
bristlebirds, and this later informed sensor placement
decisions. As people who handled the dog, TM1 and TM3
were particularly interested in finding bristlebird calls in
audio from where the dog indicated, as this would help to
validate use of a detector dog. As the bristlebird habitat
expert, TM1 additionally wanted recorders placed at a third
wild site where the vegetation was too dense for the dog
(Table 3 – Mount Barney). Though the birds don’t call at
night, TM1 was also inspired to schedule a few hours of
night recording to see if any rare nocturnal animals called,
such as quolls or koalas.
Affinity for Acoustics & Analysing Audio Recordings
Our research highlighted that acoustics hold greater appeal
for some team members than others. Acoustics were particularly appealing to TM3, who commented “I realized
much later down the track that my eyesight wasn’t that great,
and I didn’t have glasses so, I’d been missing a lot of things
in terms of finer details, I shifted over to recognizing [birds]
by call because it was easier.” Later in the interview, TM3
said, “…certainly my primary motivation would be, can I find
the bristlebird in the maze? It’s like Where’s Wally, you
know? … That would be a real buzz …” The depth of TM3’s
affinity for acoustics of nature became evident, as she
described “There is something quite altruistically rewarding
about being able to connect with the acoustic world… I don’t
get drawn into the minutia particularly visually, but the acoustics get me. So, the acoustics provide the fine scale
detail to me.” Though inexperienced, TM3 was happy to
independently analyse aviary recordings.
After analysing the audio independently online, TM3
provided feedback that they “enjoyed being able to watch the
signal [via a playhead moving across the spectrogram as
audio progressed] while listening - really helped with
understanding the calls.” Subsequent emails from TM3 also
reflected enjoyment and learning “have done the batch -
really good fun. Very helpful having some CWS [Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary audio] as well as the field ones [audio
from wild habitat]. Obviously, you get better at it the more
you do ... so happy to do another batch …”. TM3 was also
curious to know what others had been finding, asking via
email, “Have you had any positive EBB [Eastern bristlebird]
recognition from sites where [the dog] indicated odour? Or
any other positive EBB in the field [wild habitats] …?”
Interests in Exploration of Acoustics are Diverse
Each team member typically engaged with activities most
relevant to their background and professional role, and
interests in acoustics similarly aligned. TM1 and TM8, who
had an intimate familiarity with bristlebird behaviours from
field or aviary work respectively, readily incorporated sensor
deployment into their outdoor work. Typically, TM2 rarely
did bristlebird fieldwork given other work commitments, but TM2’s professional role included supporting researchers and
they volunteered to deploy sensors in wild habitats in support
of this work. TM2 also seized this opportunity to gain more
habitat familiarity. As a dog handler, TM3 was eager to
analyse audio in hopes of validating the dog’s indications,
and TM3 was also wanted to increase their own familiarity
with bird calls. Each person envisioned a variety of ways that
acoustic sensing could improve their respective conservation
activities, notwithstanding that some barriers exist.
Theme 3: Knowledge Sharing
This theme brings to light the wide breadth of knowledge the
team requires collectively, how information is acquired, and
barriers to team members relaying what they each know.
Diverse Abilities Needed & Skill Transferability Varies
Each team member has a unique set of skills and knowledge
they contribute to bristlebird conservation efforts.
Collectively, members of the team must have skills, for
example, to plan and oversee projects, administer contracts, manage personal, advocate for species, apply for grants, write
reports, and liaise with government agencies, landholders,
and contractors. Only a few team members have the essential
animal husbandry knowledge to care for and breed captive
bristlebirds. Most team members contribute to bristlebird
species recovery efforts as part of their broader professional
roles, which means they spend little to no time in habitats
were wild bristlebirds may reside. Firsthand knowledge of
bristlebird habitat assessment, habitat management needs,
and how to find and identify bristlebirds is limited to a few
people as well. Where feasible the team actively documents
existing and acquired knowledge, in the form of bristlebird recovery plans [59], husbandry protocols [25], and ecology
journal publications [56, 57]. However, much of this
knowledge is specialized, taking years to acquire through
experience, and is not easily transferable.
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Learned Wild Bird Behaviours via Mentorship & Repetition
Limited knowledge of bristlebird calls was a major barrier
for engaging with acoustics recordings. Of the five who
engaged with any acoustic recordings, only TM1 felt
confident identifying bristlebirds, and other team members
would defer to TM1 as the person to ask. One reason TM1
was hired to do field surveys as a consultant was due to TM1
having “particular expertise in bristlebirds that [the Northern
Working Group] don’t have”, according to TM3.
The depth of TM1’s knowledge became immediately evident
to us firsthand as TM1 richly detailed how calls related to
behaviours, while creating, stating, and writing descriptive
labels for each call (Figure 4). Wild pairs, for example, were
described to use short, sharp calls softly to keep “contact” or
loudly to “alert” partners of a potential threat. According to
TM1, males use different calls to “advertise” their presence
to females and indicate “territorial” boundaries to rival
males. TM1 cheerfully elaborated how bristlebirds exhibit
territoriality, saying “…you see quite interesting song battles
across territory lines. That's pretty good. You hear that regularly [referring to a call just played], and you'll see
[male] birds on the margins of fire trails particularly, often
with one [male] on one side and one [male] on the other [side
of the road]. And they'll just be calling at each other. They'll
just be popping out and popping back, but not crossing the
line.” TM1 did find a few calls from aviary bristlebirds to be
new or ‘unusual’ (also called ‘corrupt’, or ‘variant’), which
made them difficult to validate, but piqued TM1’s curiosity.
Initially, TM1 gained firsthand knowledge of bristlebirds
helping conduct “population surveys”, mentored by his late
colleague, described heartfeltly as “probably one of Australia's best ornithologists”. TM1 retains and extends this
acoustic knowledge by conducting semi-regular bristlebird
field surveys and mentoring other team members.
Acquired Knowledge of Birds by Daily Exposure
During cooperative deployments and other occasional aviary
visits, the keepers exchanged extensive firsthand knowledge
of bird care, breeding (e.g. nesting habits, interactions
between pairs and their offspring), and vocalizations habits.
For instance, TM8, described that vocalisations change and
vary depending on the season, age and sex of the bird, and
environmental circumstances. During one of the first author’s
visits, TM8 further demonstrated their nuanced knowledge of
bristlebird calls when attempting, with great enthusiasm, to
train the author’s naive ears to recognize the subtle
differences between calls of individual males. While the author couldn’t hear any distinct differences herself, TM8
explained that such differences were largely due to males
differing in maturity and subsequent singing experience
levels. Such depth acoustic knowledge is only retained over
time with regular exposure.
Theme 4: Existing & Future Networks
Conservation teams are often small like the Northern
Working Group of the bristlebird team. Numerous activities
must be completed for any one stage of bristlebird
conservation to be effective, which requires an extensive
network. Each team member leverages support through their
respective professional affiliations (i.e. often employers),
such as state agencies, environmental not-for-profits (e.g.
natural resource management, bird conservation, and wildlife sanctuary groups), universities, or consulting firms. The team
also strategically facilitates an extensive network of partner
groups, stakeholders, and specialists to complete targeted
tasks. For instance, habitat management via weed spraying
and control burning depends on developing and leveraging
professional relationships between personnel from the team,
regulatory bodies, land holders (e.g. national parks and
private property owners), and on-the-ground staff to
coordinate completion of tasks. Captive breeding efforts too,
rely on strong relationships between the team and permitting
government bodies, as well as personnel and stakeholders
from both current and potential future breeding facilities. Investing time in forging strong working relationships and
sharing responsibilities with their network helps the team
achieve objectives with minimal resources.
Hundreds to thousands of call annotations are needed to
produce discoveries that can inform future conservation
activities. While the plight of the bristlebird is relatively
unknown, the team envisioned ways that technologies might
help increase public awareness via direct collaborators, and
members of their respective extended networks (e.g.
membership of bird-focused not-for-profits, visitors of
Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, or conservation-focused university groups). The team would also be interested in
inviting the public to take a proactive role in supporting
bristlebird conservation efforts by analysing acoustic
recordings, so long as annotations are accurate enough to be
informative. Engaging the public in these ways may increase
the profile of bristlebirds, while also minimizing risk of
interfering with the last remaining bristlebirds in the north.
Theme 5: Time for Technology?
This theme explores the interplay between time constraints,
technology aversion, technology enjoyment, and cost-benefit
analyses of whether to interact with technology.
Time Constrained & Technology Averse… with Exceptions
Team members often set boundaries for time they would
devote to taking part in the study, and expressions of
technology aversion were not uncommon. Time was made
for technology when interest and potential for reward were
high, it benefitted work, and it was easy and enjoyable to use.
Time constraints voiced were related to work, family, and other volunteer commitments. TM6 volunteers time to
identify sightings sent to the Rarities Committee, which is
affiliated with a local not-for-profit organisation known as
Birds Queensland [49]. According to TM6, “… someone just
sends in an observation”. Then TM6 spends time liaising
with the submitter to get more information and provide
feedback; with fellow committee members to arrive at a bird
identification consensus; and with database managers to
ensure relevant rare sightings records are added to state data
Connections with Nature DIS '19, June 23–28, 2019, San Diego, CA, USA
1341
repositories. This example highlights a willingness to invest
time into applying their bird knowledge, while also
potentially having a role in making a new discovery.
Some were willing to commit limited time and use
technology when it benefitted conservation work. When discussing TM7’s potential involvement in this study beyond
an interview, they replied “… we’re a very small team and
very restricted resources… I guess I do a lot of voluntary
work in my spare time as well, bird related projects... I have
to prioritize … That said, if it's not a lot of time and there’s a
clear benefit doing so to the recovery team and species, then
absolutely…”. TM7 later commented, “I generally avoid
technology in my leisure time”, owing to using a computer
for much of the day, but elaborated that for conservation
work, “you’ve just got to employ the best tools at hand.”
When conducting bird surveys for work, TM7 does use the
following technologies, “… my iPhone and Bluetooth speaker used for call playback, a camera for getting bird
shots ... to be able to ID them later on.” Using a ‘playback’
strategy is the practice of playing an audio recording of a call
for a specific species and then waiting to see if animals of the
same species reveal their presence by vocally responding to
the recorded call. Ecologists and conservation scientists have
long used this technique to improve detection of furtive
species, with birders increasingly using playback to lure birds
into view (see [66] for discussion of the pros and cons of this
approach for conservation).
Even when expressing a dislike for technology, participants sometimes used technologies they perceived as fun. TM3,
who previously expressed their affinity for acoustics
developing due to eyesight difficulties, also shared that they
avoided computer games for leisure, due to time spent on the
computer at work. However, TM3 enjoyed analysing audio,
describing the process with game-like descriptors. TM3 also
provided an additional example of using a mobile device to
voluntarily transcribe ecological data about whale sharks,
even when the technology was difficult to use. As TM3
explained, “…I sat down on a rock… it was a really fun thing
to do, except that the interface was lousy … it was
complicated”. At the time of use, TM3 thought “‘I’m happy to spend an afternoon under a tree, you know, tootling
around with this’”, however, TM3’s engagement was short-
lived as “it was just too difficult… You couldn’t read the
spreadsheets properly, the database they wanted you to put it
into was difficult, the instructions weren’t clear…”.
This subtheme highlights how technology aversion can
develop from negative experiences and how aversions can be
overcome with better designs, when people may benefit by
improving knowledge, making discoveries, or having fun.
Cost-Benefit Analysis of Time for Acoustics
Participants often considered whether they would be
motivated to analyse acoustic data for bristlebirds, and why.
During a meeting, for example, TM3 expressed “At the end
of the day, for me it’s around, what do I get out of it?” Another meeting attendee elaborated a commonly expressed
sentiment “Because it’s your time, and you’ve not got a lot of
time”. TM3 continued, “for me it’s now up as a priority [to
analyse audio] for a number of reasons, because I want
something out of it… if it’s easy, accessible, simple to do”.
While explaining being time poor in work and leisure, TM7 highlighted the appeal of spending screen time on acoustic
analysis, by saying, “the one thing that appeals to me about
the idea of it would be to increase my own learning. So that I
can learn bristlebird calls better. Then I can do my job
better… to also just improve my ability as a birder out there
in my leisure activity. So, for me it would be almost entirely
selfish reasons…”. In summary, the study revealed how
design can improve analysis of audio to be easier, more
engaging, appeal to motivations, and support learning.
DISCUSSION
Through exploring the potential for acoustics to support
conservation efforts we learned how the bristlebird team
operates, as well as potential benefits and current barriers to
adopting acoustic technologies to support their work. From themes, our observations, interactions with the team, and our
combined experience in conservation, design, and acoustics,
we developed guidelines. These are a set of pillars that
highlight interaction design needs to: 1) Discern goals &
motivations, 2) Improve skills & knowledge, 3) Facilitate
information exchange, 4) Extend beyond the team, and 5)
Design for engagement, usability, & impact. If designers
investigate design elements for each pillar, future technology
designed to support conservation will likely have greater
uptake and subsequent impact in wildlife conservation.
Pillar 1: Discern Goals & Motivations
Conservation goals develop iteratively over time according to
the present state of the species population. Designers need to
understand the priorities of conservationists, their goals, and
motivations, to make technologies that are useful and will be adopted. This involves working to understand how to
translate the conservation goals and motivations into design
goals. Each step in the conservation approach identified in
theme 1, which entails identifying species needs, threats,
solutions, and implementation of actions, deserve design
consideration for technologies to support conservation goals.
Conservationists are implementing multiple strategies at any
given time and change tactics often to maximise outcomes.
Changes are in response to learning more about species
behaviours, effectiveness of conservation methods tried, and
new tools becoming available (e.g. for ecological research, habitat restoration, field surveys, and captive breeding).
Designers and conservationists need to make a judgment
together about which technologies will advance both short-
term and long-term conservation objectives. Developing
infrastructure for long-term ecological collaboration is key
[34]. Tools take time to create, learn, and develop practices
around. Given these investments, tool designs should have a
reasonable level of applicability over time.
Design work is needed to explore motivations of prospective
participant groups and the broader public. Like
Connections with Nature DIS '19, June 23–28, 2019, San Diego, CA, USA
1342
conservationists, some members of the public volunteer as
citizen scientists on environmental and conservation-focused
projects out of desire to help a species in need and learn
about wildlife [27, 53]. However, motivations for citizen
scientists and crowdsourcing people change over time [6, 52]. Design needs to consider what will motivate people to
analyse acoustic data over short and sustained periods.
Pillar 2: Improve Skills & Knowledge
When designing to improve people’s ability to identify calls of birds from acoustic recordings, design should explore
needs of people with a range of familiarity with birds, from
novices to expert. Our work highlights the need for design to
increase people’s interest in birdcalls (as also in [55]), and to
take them through a familiarization process, which leads
them to initially notice, listen to, and decipher different calls
and behaviours. Engaging technologies can also extend
people’s interest to interpreting spectrograms of acoustic
recordings. These visualisations reveal call features from a
different perspective and enable sound to be seen and heard.
Birders use a variety of environmental cues to aid in identifying species seen and/or heard [11, 15]. Design has
only begun to explore how digital technologies can elicit
knowledge and memories about nature [42]. What role
environmental context and animal behaviour information can
play to facilitate accurate species identification and learning
while analysing acoustic recordings deserves design
attention. Learning the acoustics themselves is an ongoing
endeavour, requiring initial familiarization, practice, and
revision. Training will need to be a fundamental component
of systems. To sustain motivation and interest, training needs
to be fun, engaging, and compelling. It should also enhance skills, include collaboration, and lead to benefiting
conservation of bristlebirds in diverse ways.
Pillar 3: Facilitate Information Exchange
In the case of the bristlebird team, challenges in sharing knowledge of animal calls is a major limiting factor for
utilizing acoustics. Only team members with frequent
exposure to calling bristlebirds could identify the serenades,
and each person had different knowledge that wasn’t easily
shared. While some calls are available via commercial
electronic Australian bird guides [e.g. 40], calls provided
comprise only a few commonly recorded vocalisations.
Additionally, there is the potential that an isolated population
can have rapid repertoire changes, or particular calls may not
be used in the presence of humans. These factors may
explain why some bristlebird calls recorded in aviaries were new to even the expert who conducts surveys. Systems
design could provide innovative ways to annotate and tag
audio and associated visualisations (e.g. multi-label
annotations [12]). Such platforms could also allow sharing of
existing knowledge, and exchange new discoveries.
Designs can enable people who have expertise to take on
roles that require more knowledge, such as mentoring those
with less knowledge or checking their audio analyses.
Having some knowledge often breeds more interest and
questions, such that people will invest substantial amounts of
time in learning about things that interest them. Thus,
understanding baseline knowledge and developing strategies
to grow knowledge and interest are keys to design success.
There is a critical need to develop a cooperative system for analysing acoustic data. Further research needs to explore the
most effective way to disseminate acoustic information from
one person to another. Passively supplying audio samples
containing calls via a webpage proved to be ineffective, as
conservation team members were not drawn to use the
website. Designers have explored creative ways to share
information with audio, such as through acoustic mementoes
[18], an audio book [33], and other tangible objects [45].
Attention should be given to whether such interactive
technologies may prove fun and effective for exchanging
information about bristlebirds and their calls. Smart phones
are being used to record information about species and revealing the location of species is a concern. Future systems
need to take into account that different levels of privacy may
be required, depending on the species of animal being
investigated, and which stakeholders are analysing acoustic
recordings.
Pillar 4: Extend Beyond the Team
Our work highlighted the need to extend audio recording
analysis to groups much broader than conservation teams.
The need for large scale data analysis, whether acoustic
recordings, images, videos, or other data, is largely what has
fuelled rapid increase of citizen science and crowdsourcing
projects that contribute to conservation [14, 38, 67].
Designers need to conduct extensive exploratory work with
broad groups of people to understand their needs, interests and motivations, and respond to these in future technologies
aimed at extending conservation to the broader public.
Designing for flexible amounts of engagement with a
technology and with a project is important, as even those
who interact with the technologies for only a short time may
champion efforts more broadly [20]. It’s also worth exploring
how interpretation of sound varies between diverse groups
that rely on sound for different reasons, such as birders,
musicians, and people with visual-impairments.
Pillar 5: Design for Engagement, Usability, & Impact
This pillar emphasizes the need to explore the design of
playful, usable, and rewarding technologies that lead to
conservation impact. As found in Theme 5, conservationists
are always assessing whether to invest time into technology
use. This is because technologies often take time to learn and configure, and it can be dull and laborious to use, adding to
the burden of workload. However, there is potential to design
technologies that are delightful, foster learning, and are
socially engaging [22]. Systems should be designed to
support conservation in diverse ways and impact needs to be
measurable, whether considering audio analysis metrics or
participation of people as a metric for outreach, or other
measure that reflect conservation success.
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REFLECTIONS
We have offered a thick description of a species recovery
team’s practices, and also provided an understanding of their
experiences using of previously unfamiliar technologies.
Our analysis reveals a description of day-to-day practices and
highlights difference in knowledge across team members.
Ethnographic study, combined with acoustic technology
explorations deepened our understanding of engaging the team with the entire technological pipeline of acoustic
sensing, from deploying sensors to collaborative audio
analysis. Delving into team-created documents (e.g. from
meetings, the recovery plan [59] and the husbandry manual
[25]) and comparing these to practices discussed and
observed, provided us a deeper historical and present-day
context for the species recovery process as well.
This design study opened doors into a world full of
challenges for species recovery, such as the complexities of
how human contrived political boundaries influence actions
taken to save a species. It is beyond the scope of this paper to report all findings from our large and diverse dataset. We
therefore focussed on aspects of work and outlooks most
likely to influence technology designs and subsequent
success of finding bristlebirds using acoustic technologies.
We anticipate that our design pillars apply to any design for a
conservation project; however, it is important for this work to
be validated through research targeting other species.
Findings of this study and use of acoustics are applicable to
bristlebird conservation. It is for the reader, who may have
their own species and environmental context in mind, to
ascertain the extent to which these findings can be applied. In many respects the value of rich description lies in enabling
the reader to determine applicability to their own context.
Thus, while we anticipate that these design pillars apply to
other vocal species, we do not claim generalizability. Rather
we offer our findings from the Eastern bristlebird project to
inform the work of other researchers investigating design for
conservation of other species, with the hope that it will be
further refined and elaborated.
Pillars 1 through 4 emphasize people’s goals and
motivations, the need to learn, the need to share knowledge
and to grow networks respectively. Pillar 5 emphasizes the
essence of design that is needed for these systems to be impactful in terms of use and conservation outcomes.
Systems must be engaging. Systems developed to date for
investigating environmental and bird sound focus on
presentation of big data [e.g. 61] or on sharing small clips
[e.g. 65]. The former demand existing knowledge and
investment of significant time for effective use, such that
they are generally used by ecological researchers. The latter
are generally used by bird enthusiasts. More research is
needed to understand how we can build familiarization with
animal sounds in fun ways, and to engage further curiosity,
interest, and learning that ultimately leads to informative audio recording analysis to improve conservation. Because
developing interest in and learning about birds and acoustics
is an ongoing endeavour, requiring skill growth, and sharing,
such approaches need to be designed at many levels and
scaled up, developing playful infrastructures for engaging
people in activities that support conservation work [36]
In comparing these pillars with a well-used interaction design framework such as PACT - People, Activities, Context,
Technology [8], we reflect that our pillars all address the
evolving nature of conservation work, rather than a static
problem or opportunity. Conservation can be characterised as
an evolving design research activity where the team is
working iteratively on multiple initiatives to make and assess
progress. It is a given that the context needs to be understood
in conservation work. What stands out about the themes and
pillars, is that all relate to aspects that are evolving rather
than static. Conservation entails evolving goals and
understandings, learning more about wildlife, increasing
sharing, growing the team, and making more engaging and
enduringly enticing technologies.
Finally, we note that animal and human activities are
mutually influential in design. Learning about animal
behaviours and populations through conservation action,
acoustics, and other design investigations influences human
conservation actions, which in turn influence the animal
populations and behaviours themselves.
CONCLUSIONS
This detailed participatory fieldwork study contributes
unique insights into how acoustic technologies can support
saving wildlife. It also reveals diverse opportunities for future
design research to help overcome existing conservation
challenges. Systems need to engage people in questioning, learning, and sharing, rather than simply aiming to
automatically detect species, or expecting people to do
laborious work. People’s practices and aspirations must be
considered when designing acoustic systems to support the
collaborative work of species recovery.
We anticipate that the design pillars from this study can be
applied to other conservation projects involving secretive or
rare species that can be located by acoustics. It is important
for this work to be validated through further work with
additional species. Our intention is to support and inspire
more DIS research to support conservation. Wildlife would
benefit greatly from technologies designed for the overall conservation context, including the needs of both the
conservation teams and the species they are trying to save.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the team for their enthusiasm, participation, and
support for this research, as well as for their unwavering
dedication to reversing the plight of Eastern bristlebirds.
Additionally, we thank the Australian Research Council for
supporting this work through DP140102325, as well as the
Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland. We also thank
all who reviewed various drafts of this research, including
anonymous DIS reviewers, for their helpful comments that
substantially improved this publication.
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