On Thursday 5 March 2026, the WildObs team presented their first public webinar to approximately 200 attendees, with another 100 attendees registered to receive the recording once complete. 

The webinar provided an overview of the platform, the challenges WildObs seeks to address for conservation researchers, ecologists, and conservation teams, and its potential applications ahead of its official launch on 1 June.

Hamish Holewa, the Director of Planet Research Data Commons (ARDC), welcomed attendees and provided an introduction to the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and the partnerships that form the collaborative initiative of WildObs. 

Assoc. Prof Matthew Luskin, Director of WildObs (UQ), gave an overview of the challenges WildObs was created to address and the problems that the project is focused on. 

Colin Broughton, Conservation Systems Developer (Bush Heritage Australia), provided a non-government organisation case study of WildObs to achieve the goals of doing more camera trapping more effectively, faster, cheaper and with higher accuracy, with a focus on being able to share more Bush Heritage Data. 

Dr Jenna Wraith, WildObs Project Manager (QCIF Digital Research), introduced the WildObs team and partners and provided an overview of the WildObs infrastructure.

Dr Zachary Amir, Principal Data Scientist (TERN), discussed the WildObs Image Platform and WildObs Database. 

Dr Renee Piccolo, Data Scientist (UQ), introduced WildObs data sharing terms, including data licencing and data sharing levels. 

The team then answered a number of attendee questions, including some highlighting key differences to existing tools, the role of human validation of AI annnotation of camera trap images, training models for specific environments and the treatment of culturally sensitive data. 

For more information about WildObs and to stay up-to-date with the latest news and events, sign up for the WildObs newsletter and/or reach out to the team through their contact us form. Whether you’re interested in contributing data, using the platform, collaborating on research, or learning more about our infrastructure, we’d love to hear from you.

WildObs is a co-investment partnership with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) through the Planet Research Data Commons (DOI:10.3565/bvg2-b035). The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).