In what scientists are calling a breakthrough moment for conservation technology, the Bezos Earth Fund has awarded $1.8 million to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics to develop new artificial intelligence systems that can “listen” to the planet. The initiative aims to detect real-time environmental threats — from illegal logging to wildlife decline — and transform biodiversity monitoring in some of the world’s most endangered ecosystems.
The Cornell Lab is one of 15 recipients of the Bezos Earth Fund’s AI Grand Challenge for Climate and Nature, which supports AI-driven solutions to environmental crises, including biodiversity loss, deforestation, and food insecurity.
Listening to a world in crisis
Traditional biodiversity monitoring depends on human observation — a slow, costly process that cannot match the scale or urgency of species loss now unfolding. Bioacoustics, the study of animal sounds, offers a powerful alternative by using microphones and sensors to detect, record, and analyze soundscapes across entire ecosystems.
“We are facing the biggest environmental challenge because of the scale of the changes and the speed at which they’re happening — it’s effectively a mass extinction that’s happening within decades rather than millennia,” said Ian Owens, director of the Cornell Lab. “We simply don’t know how wildlife populations are doing, particularly in the most biodiverse regions. We need scalable, efficient solutions — and this project helps unlock exactly that.”
AI-powered sensors for the Global South
The Cornell team, working with partners including Mongabay, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany, and Brazil’s Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, will deploy next-generation bioacoustic sensors enhanced with AI analytics.
Their work will focus on two of the most threatened biodiversity hotspots in the Global South: Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve and Brazil’s Pantanal wetland.
In Guatemala, where the Maya Biosphere Reserve faces deforestation, fires, and illegal poaching, the team will deploy real-time acoustic recorders developed with Analog Devices. These AI-enabled devices will analyze sound data in the field and transmit alerts about disturbances such as chainsaws or gunfire — a capability that “no commercial product out there can do,” said Holger Klinck, director of the Yang Center.
In Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, the technology will monitor populations of jaguars, giant anteaters, hyacinth macaws, and other species threatened by ranching and wildfires. “Conservation cannot advance without a solid understanding of what is present and what is at stake,” Klinck said. “These new tools will allow managers to act in support of biodiversity around the world.”
A new model for biodiversity monitoring
The project will also create the first AI foundation model for natural sounds, a global dataset and algorithm capable of classifying species and environmental patterns across different habitats.
“This bioacoustic model will enable a much more comprehensive assessment of ecosystems, representing a turning point in biodiversity monitoring,” said Larissa Sayuri Moreira Sugai, interim assistant director at the Yang Center.
By integrating sound recognition AI with real-time acoustic data, researchers can generate continuous ecosystem “health reports” — the ecological equivalent of satellite imaging for wildlife. Funding from the Bezos Earth Fund will also support open data sharing and capacity-building with local conservation teams, ensuring the technology is applied directly to field management and policy decisions.
A turning point for conservation intelligence
For the Bezos Earth Fund, led by Lauren Sánchez and Dr. Andrew Steer, the AI Grand Challenge reflects a growing emphasis on data-driven climate and nature solutions. It recognizes that monitoring biodiversity in real time is essential to achieving the Global Biodiversity Framework’s 2030 targets and strengthening climate adaptation in vulnerable ecosystems.
“Bioacoustics has been the ‘silver bullet’ of hope for conservationists for some time,” Owens said. “We’re going to put together the hardware, software, and interfaces that will allow conservation decision-makers to use this technology easily — to help reverse biodiversity declines.”
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