A new AI-powered camera system could potentially make road crossings less of a nightmare for koalas. Scientists have developed a camera that can be incorporated into smart road signs to warn passengers about koalas crossing the roads. A prototype of the technology captured and recorded a koala crossing a road in real time in the Australian state of Queensland, validating the methodology for the first time. Developed by scientists at Griffith University in Queensland, the camera is an expansion of previous work where the scientists built a database to detect koalas crossing roads. The Australian government has declared koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) an endangered species in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australia Capital Territory. Population counts of these marsupials are hard to maintain because they usually live high up in trees and are nocturnal animals. “They can be hard to see,” Douglas Kerlin, senior research fellow at Griffith University’s School of Environment and Science, told Monday in an email interview. “They are distributed across such a vast area that it is difficult to really know how many there are with any certainty.” Koalas face threats to their survival from multiple quarters. While deforestation and urbanization have destroyed eucalyptus forests, their primary habitats, they also face the risk of diseases. To make matters worse, the deadly Australian bushfires of 2019 and 2020 decimated their populations across the country. As human encroachment into forests rise, these animals often have to cross roads to travel across their fragmented habitats. As a result, vehicle…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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