Yandex Kazakhstan helps save snow leopards from extinction

Yandex Qazaqstan, together with students from the Kazakhstan British Technical University, specialists from the Institute of Zoology of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and the Snow Leopard Foundation, successfully trained a neural network to recognize snow leopards. This technology not only allows distinguishing snow leopards from other animals but also identifying each individual uniquely. This discovery will be an important step in preserving the population of this rare species and improving the effectiveness of conservation programs.

Thousands of photographs taken in the natural habitat of snow leopards using camera traps were used to create the neural network. The system recognizes animals by unique features such as fur patterns and body proportions, and can process up to eight million images in less than an hour. Developers aim to increase the accuracy of the model to 95%.

This project was implemented on the Yandex Cloud platform, and company specialists helped KBTU students in creating and training the model.

Recently, as part of this project, a population of 20 previously unnoticed leopards was discovered in the Altyn-Emel National Park. This discovery will significantly improve the protection of these animals. The project demonstrates how modern technologies can help in real life, and Yandex Cloud is ready to share its experience and technologies with the scientific community.

Source: er10.kz