Ceo demonstrates power of ai wildlife monitoring by counting central park’s squirrels in one morning

When ecologist Robin Whytock walked through Central Park on a Saturday morning with just a cup of coffee and cutting-edge technology, he accomplished something remarkable: counting nearly 3,000 squirrels in just a few hours. His AI-powered survey estimated 2,979 squirrels living in the iconic Manhattan park—a figure strikingly close to the 2,373 squirrels counted by 300 volunteers during an intensive eight-month survey in 2018.

Whytock’s impromptu demonstration wasn’t just a tech showcase. As CEO and founder of Okala, an AI-powered nature monitoring platform, he was making a crucial point about the future of biodiversity research. During New York Climate Week in September, countless scientists had shared their frustrations with him about the challenges of conducting wildlife surveys—the time, cost, and human resources required often make comprehensive biodiversity monitoring nearly impossible.

“If I can come up with an estimate of the squirrel population in a morning that’s in the ballpark of what was done by a hugely intensive survey with 300 people, let’s think of what’s possible in terms of the scalability of technology,” Whytock explained. His Central Park experiment highlights a growing revolution in conservation science, where AI and affordable sensors are transforming how we monitor wildlife populations.

However, Whytock warns that the real challenge isn’t the hardware—it’s data analysis. Too many conservation projects invest heavily in sensors and data collection but lack the expertise to process the massive amounts of information generated, potentially limiting the impact of these technological advances on biodiversity conservation efforts.