Open-source AI for biodiversity monitoring and conservation.
Microsoft AI for Good Lab — camera-trap detection, bioacoustic analysis, species classification, field deployment.
Our journey started with MegaDetector — a camera-trap animal detection model that became a widely adopted tool in the conservation community. Building on that foundation, we created PyTorch-Wildlife as a unified platform to host all of our AI for biodiversity work, bringing together detection, classification, and eventually much more.
Over time, our scope grew well beyond camera-trap imagery. We now have active work in bioacoustics, overhead animal detection, edge computing for remote field deployments, and a dedicated desktop UI — SPARROW Studio — that runs every model we produce. As the ecosystem expanded, it became clear that keeping everything inside a single repository was working against us. Code was harder to find, harder to maintain, and harder to extend.
So we made a deliberate decision: break the work into focused, dedicated repositories — one per project — where the code in each repo is concentrated, the ownership is clear, and future contributors know exactly where to go. This repository is the hub that ties them together. PyTorch-Wildlife now lives at microsoft/PytorchWildlife, MegaDetector at microsoft/MegaDetector, and everything else is linked in the table below.
| Repo | What it is |
|---|---|
| microsoft/MegaDetector | AI model for detecting animals, people, and vehicles in camera-trap imagery — where it all started |
| microsoft/MegaDetector-Acoustics | Bioacoustic AI for biodiversity monitoring — audio classification and species identification from sound |
| microsoft/MegaDetector-Overhead | Overhead imagery detection — point-based wildlife localization from aerial views |
| microsoft/PytorchWildlife | The collaborative deep learning framework and model zoo for conservation AI |
| microsoft/WildlifeClassification | Species classification models, running downstream of MegaDetector detection |
| microsoft/Bongo | (Owner-populated) |
| microsoft/SPARROW | Solar-Powered Acoustic and Remote Recording Observation Watch — AI edge device for remote field deployments |
| /SPARROW-Studio | The all-in-one desktop UI for running every model in this ecosystem |
When citing work that uses any of the repositories under this umbrella, please cite:
- Hernandez et al. 2024 — Pytorch-Wildlife: A Collaborative Deep Learning Framework for Conservation — for any use of the PyTorch-Wildlife framework or models accessed through it
- Beery, Morris, Yang 2019 — Efficient Pipeline for Camera Trap Image Review — for any use of MegaDetector specifically
A citation.cff file is included in this repository for automated citation tools.
We welcome community contributions. See our Contribution Guidelines for how to participate.
Have questions or want to connect with the team? Join us on Discord:
A list of organizations using MegaDetector across global conservation work — six years of partnerships, from national parks to research universities to NGOs — is maintained on the microsoft/MegaDetector repository.
Important
If you would like to be added to this list or have any questions regarding MegaDetector and Pytorch-Wildlife, please email us or join us in our Discord channel:
Maintained by Microsoft AI for Good Lab.