A research team led by Justin Kitzes, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, is collaborating with the National Audubon Society to use artificial intelligence in bird conservation across Latin America. Their work has been recognized with a $2 million award from the Bezos Earth Fund supporting Audubon’s efforts to harness AI for biodiversity monitoring and protection.
The award supports Audubon’s Conserva Aves initiative: a network of protected areas across Latin America co-led by Audubon, BirdLife International, the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Environmental Funds (RedLAC), and the Latin American Network for Technical Cooperation in Protected Areas (REDPARQUES). The project will use innovative AI and acoustic monitoring techniques to better understand and protect bird populations in some of the most ecologically important and biodiverse regions of the world.
Kitzes’s quantitative ecology and conservation lab at Pitt will play a central role in this work by helping collect and analyze acoustic data from multiple Conserva Aves sites.
“We are interested in where species are found and why they’re there – which, to be fair, is one of the oldest questions in ecology,” Kitzes said. “We’re particularly interested in species that are rare and hard to detect, which are often missed or understudied in traditional field work. To get at those, we use new methods – automated acoustic surveys and AI models – to answer that old question.”
Using small, programmable sound recorders deployed across Pennsylvania and around the world, the Kitzes Lab develops and applies machine learning models to identify bird and frog species from their vocalizations, revealing patterns of presence, behavior, and habitat use. The lab’s work combines field ecology, data science, and conservation applications.
“This award is building on collaborative work that we started with the National Audubon Society [in 2024],” Kitzes explained. “We’ll be supporting them in collecting acoustic data across several sites within their reserve network, with the goal of using this information to improve conservation management and to locate important bird species that may have been previously overlooked.”
For Kitzes and his team, the project offers both scientific challenges and conservation impact.
“It gives us the opportunity to continue expanding our work in the Latin American tropics – some of the most difficult regions to monitor using our methods, but also among the most important for biodiversity conservation,” Kitzes said. “It also strengthens our commitment to collaborative research, helping other organizations use these tools to advance ecological understanding and conservation outcomes.”
The Bezos Earth Fund’s investment in Audubon’s AI initiatives underscores the growing role of technology in conservation science and the value of partnerships that unite researchers, NGOs, and local communities across borders to safeguard the planet’s biodiversity.