Published September 11, 2026 (via The Conversation) by Jeran Cloete, Dian Spear, Jessica da Silva, Lavhelesani Dembe Simba and Peter J. Carrick, this piece examines how AI offers real opportunities for biodiversity conservation — including animal tracking, land-use prediction and wildlife-trade detection — while posing risks such as community alienation, job losses in taxonomy, and the perpetuation of colonial biases in ecological research. The authors argue strong regulation of AI in environmental science is a moral and legal imperative, calling for validation protocols, disclosure standards, and human oversight to preserve indigenous knowledge and ecological expertise in conservation decisions.
