Japan Business Initiative for Biodiversity

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Fujitsu Limited

Using ICT to support organizations engaged in activities to conserve biodiversity

Blakiston’s fish owl (Photo courtesy of the Wild Bird Society of Japan.)

Fujitsu is contributing to surveys conducted by the Wild Bird Society of Japan to establish wild bird protection areas for Blakiston’s fish owl as only about 165 of these owls remain in Hokkaido. The company is assisting this activity by developing and supplying software that automatically identifies the calls of Blakiston’s fish owl by matching them with templated data of the owl’s call characteristics.

By harnessing Fujitsu’s ICT, as well as introducing AI technology, the software allows calls of Blakiston’s fish owl to be accurately detected by extracting the calls from recorded audio data automatically, and substantially shortens the time required to analyze the audio data. Three hours-worth of recorded data can be analyzed within a few minutes. This paves the way to expanding research areas and survey frequency, and boosts owl conservation activities in the process.

In the vast 100,000 hectares of Sumatra Island’s Hutan Harapan, which is Indonesia’s first Ecosystem Restoration Concession and BirdLife International’s first Forests of Hope site, BirdLife International and Burung Indonesia have been conducting activities to restore the devastated rainforest and use natural capital sustainably—an initiative that is also significant in enhancing forest carbon sequestration and mitigating climate change.

Forest patrols have been conducted to prevent large-scale forest fires and illegal logging, but they were time-consuming efforts that took away resources needed for the original mission of forest restoration. Fujitsu supported forest patrols by using ICT to increase their efficiency and effectiveness. By making patrols more efficient, appropriate responses to deforestation can be expected. Fujitsu contributes to forest conservation through such activities.

A Forests of Hope site: Hutan Harapan (Photo courtesy of Hutan Harapan.)