There is a growing recognition that animal behaviour can impact wildlife conservation, but there have been few direct studies of animal behaviour during conservation programmes. However, a great deal of existing behavioural research can be applied in the context of conservation. Research on avian vocalizations provides an excellent example. The conspicuous nature of birds’ vocal behaviour makes it a useful tool for monitoring populations and measuring biodiversity, but the importance of vocalizations in conservation goes well beyond monitoring. Geographic song variants with population‐specific signatures, or dialects, can impact territory formation and mate choice. Dialects are influenced by both cultural evolution and natural selection and changes can accumulate even during the timescale of conservation interventions such as translocations, reintroductions, and ex situ breeding. Changes in dialects could create obstacles for conservation programmes that bring birds from multiple populations together, and so reduce the success of interventions. Here, we explain how existing birdsong research can be applied to conservation programmes, highlighting benefits and concerns that should be taken into account during conservation planning. Article impact statement: Avian vocalizations are well studied but should be considered more both as a tool and potential hindrance in conservation interventions. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Exploring the interaction between humans and animals has become increasingly important in the evaluation of well-being for species housed in zoos and aquaria. The COVID-19 pandemic saw the global closure of zoos and aquaria to visitors. Chester Zoo, U.K., was no exception, with the charity shutting its doors for the longest period in its 90-year history. Whilst access to site was strictly limited to essential animal care staff, recent investment in networked infrared CCTV camera systems allowed some species to be monitored remotely during this extraordinary period of zoo closure. Here, we used this equipment to investigate whether zoo closure influenced activity patterns and behavior of two adult Palawan binturong, Arctictis binturong whitei. The cameras facilitated behavioral monitoring over 24 h enabling the collection of a full activity budget, which revealed a natural crepuscular activity pattern. Overall, visitor presence was found to have a neutral effect on this species, with no significant difference observed in time spent engaging in den use, vigilance or travel behaviors during zoo open and zoo closed conditions. A neutral visitor effect was found when evaluating behavior over a 24 h period and during hours which the zoo would normally be open to visitors (10:00–16:30). This research presents new information on this elusive and understudied species in captivity, and promotes investment in monitoring equipment which enables more comprehensive behavioral sampling than traditional visitor-effect methods.

In order to be successful and have high standards of animal welfare, modern zoos strive to regularly modify, improve, and build animal enclosures and visitor areas. However, these periods of development could result in temporary durations of sub-optimal welfare for animals housed nearby. In this study, we monitored the behavior of three Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) prior to, during, and following a period of construction on a nearby building. Our results provide evidence that welfare may have been temporarily reduced during the construction period. Compared to the pre-construction period, the male exhibited an increase in pacing behavior and all three lions reduced the time they spent resting. We infer that the most significant negative stimulus related to the construction was sound and/or ground vibrations, as a physical barrier ruled out stress from visual stimuli. The behavioral response to the construction work was relatively short-lived and no long-term changes were observed one year on. This research highlights the importance of measuring animal behavior around events outside routine husbandry, and considering animal welfare on an individual basis. Finally, this work adds to the body of literature surrounding the impacts of construction on animal wellbeing and outlines some suggestions for potential mitigation.

Modern zoos strive to construct habitats which both enable and encourage animals to engage in species-specific behaviour, without compromising their visibility to visitors. Here, we present the findings of a within-zoo move to a custom-built exhibit (Islands at Chester Zoo, UK) with respect to the behaviour of four mammal species; the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii), crested macaque (Macaca nigra), Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus) and the Malayan sun bear (Helarctos malayanus). We used full activity budgets along with Compositional Data Analysis (CoDA) to gain insight into how the move to a more naturalistic exhibit influenced behaviour. Engagement in abnormal behaviour remained low during the study period for all four species, suggesting no adverse responses to the change in environment. Following the move, both the non-human primate species spent more time engaged in positive social interactions with conspecifics, highlighting the importance of social support during enclosure moves. Time spent visible to the public was largely unaffected by the enclosure move for the Sumatran orangutan, whilst the movement to a new environment increased visibility for the Malayan sun bear and decreased visibility for the crested macaque and Malayan tapir. We demonstrate the value of monitoring behaviour throughout the translocation of zoo-housed species and outline the positive behavioral impacts of providing individuals with naturalistic, species-appropriate environments.

The widespread adoption of camera trap surveys for wildlife monitoring has generated a substantial volume of ecological data, yet processing constraints persist due to the time-consuming process of manual image classification and the reliability of automated systems. This study assesses the performance of Conservation AI’s UK Mammals model in classifying three species—Western European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus), red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), and European badgers (Meles meles)—from a subsample of 234 records from camera trap images collected through a citizen science initiative across residential gardens. This analysis was repeated after retraining the model to assess improvement in model performance. Initial model outputs demonstrated high precision (>0.80) for foxes and hedgehogs but low recall (<0.50) for hedgehogs, with the lowest recall probability of 0.12 at the 95% confidence threshold (CT). Following retraining, model performance improved substantially across all metrics, with average F1-scores (weighted average of precision and recall across the three species tested) improving at all CTs, though discrepancies with human classifications remained statistically significant. Based on performance results from this study, we present a semi-automated, three-step workflow incorporating an artificially intelligent (AI) generalist object detector (MegaDetector), an AI species-specific classifier (Conservation AI), and manual validation. Where privacy concerns restrict citizen science contributions, our pipeline offers an alternative that accelerates camera trap data analysis whilst maintaining classification accuracy. The findings provide baseline performance estimates of Conservation AI’s UK Mammals model and present an approach that offers a practical solution to improve the efficiency of using camera traps in ecological research and conservation planning. We also highlight the importance of continuous AI model training, the value of citizen science in expanding training datasets, and the need for adaptable workflows in camera trap studies.