The Gujarat Forest Department has turned to an innovative solution for the management and conservation of Asiatic lions. It is now using AI-based software called SIMBA, that individually identifies Asiatic lions based on their physical features.
The tool will be used for understanding population demographics and expanding conservation and management efforts towards thriving Gir’s and India’s pride – the Asiatic Lions.
About SIMBA
SIMBA or Software with Intelligent Marking Based identification of Asiatic lions is a photo-identification software, specifically designed to distinguish patterns or marks. The software has been developed by Hyderabad-based “teliolabs”. The software is trained with sufficient training data and is able to isolate the region of interest (ROI) and separate them for further identification.
Dr. Mohan Ram, (IFS) Deputy Conservator of Forests, Gir National Park & Wildlife Sanctuary, Gujarat, told PBNS that the SIMBA software would be used to create a library of data on the Asiatic lions. It can be used to create a database with a unique identification number/ name.
How does SIMBA works?
Asiatic lions have unique whisker spots on either side of their muzzle. According to scientific studies, these precise patterns are highly variable and do not change over time.
SIMBA works with a deep machine learning technique that matches a point-pattern for pairwise comparisons that automates the individual identification, based on the variability in the individual’s whisker spot pattern, the presence of scars on the face, notches on the ears, and other metadata of the photograph.
The software also extracts the uniqueness from the photograph and can cluster similar patterns or marks within the embedding space of the machine learning.
Benefits of SIMBA
– It allows the user to identify and search whether the individual already exists in the database or is a new inventory.
– Additional information like gender (male/female), name, microchip number, life-status (dead/alive), lactating (in case of female) can also be used to filter the individual from the database.
– It has a user-friendly graphical interface that helps to understand the available database easily.
– SIMBA will aid the efforts towards conservation and management of the species in the Asiatic lion landscape.
Asiatic Lions
Asiatic lions are endemic to the Gir landscape of Gujarat. It is one of the 21 critically endangered species identified by the Union Environment Ministry for taking up recovery programmes.
Asiatic lions are slightly smaller than African lions and have unique whisker spot patterns. The Asiatic lions are also accorded the highest degree of protection and are listed in Schedule-I of Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
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