Organizer(s): Douglas Clark, University of Saskatchewan; Chris Sandbrook, University of Cambridge 

Game-changing conservation technologies such as drones and remote cameras are proliferating at an ever-faster pace. These methods promise unique, novel, and valuable insights for conservation, but their deployment also raises serious questions for society about privacy, rights, and livelihoods. The challenges inherent in developing and applying biological conservation technologies are not novel - telemetry collaring has been around for decades, for example - but in some cases societal concerns about those technologies haven’t been addressed. Such outcomes weaken public support for conservation efforts, sometimes critically. Clearly, maximizing the potential for new technologies to contribute to conservation efforts requires concerted thinking about unintended societal effects that has been lacking to date. Moreover, these new technologies are being brought into the field at a time when public concern about privacy and the implications of “big data”, privacy, and digital surveillance is high. This symposium will examine societal issues raised by a set of new and established surveillance technologies in conservation and explore the following questions: What principles should guide their development and implementation? How can conservationists better anticipate and navigate the tradeoffs between conservation benefits and societal costs? How can emerging technologies be used and communicated in order to build stronger constituencies for conservation, instead of risking public backlash? Are there common experiences and lessons from the deployment of different technologies, specifically remote cameras and drones?

Sponsored by the Social Science Working Group