{"id":804154,"date":"2026-08-06T02:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T02:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/804154\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T02:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T02:48:17","slug":"ai-technology-helps-track-trap-invasive-everglades-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/804154\/","title":{"rendered":"AI technology helps track, trap invasive Everglades species"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Florida\u2019s invasive species problem has become what some experts call an ecological disaster.<\/p>\n

Burmese pythons<\/a> have wiped out 87% to 99% of native mammal populations in parts of the Everglades, and green iguanas tear up landscaping and burrow into seawalls, weakening infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Now scientists are fighting back with AI, including building tools to catch an aggressive 5-foot lizard that\u2019s been known to wander into backyards and chase down family pets.<\/p>\n

The tegu lizard<\/a>, a South American transplant that roams roadsides and canal banks near the Everglades, can easily wander into any of the backyards bordering the 1.5-million acre wetland.<\/p>\n

The solution, according to U.S. Geological Survey researchers, is AI-connected $300 cameras that spot the lizards automatically and alert scientists the moment one shows up; from there, researchers set traps where the animals were seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cTegus can show up in people\u2019s backyards and potentially have conflicts with pets or people,\u201d said Amanda Kissel, an invasive species research ecologist at the USGS Fort Collins Science Center<\/a>, who\u2019s spearheading this project.<\/p>\n

The lizards prey on ground-nesting species.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the biggest concerns is that they consume eggs,\u201d Kissel said. \u201cSo, birds, alligators, gopher tortoises, they\u2019re all at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the team deployed 15 cameras near the entrance to Everglades National Park, they captured over 300 images of tegus, illustrating the scope of the problem.<\/p>\n

\"AA University of Florida researcher uses an AI-powered application to tend to a tegu lizard trap, left, and a trapped invasive tegu lizard. (University of Florida\/Courtesy)<\/p>\n

Before the age of AI, researchers relied on SD cards tucked into field cameras. Every week, someone had to physically retrieve the cards, download the images, and sift through them by hand \u2014 a process that could take weeks or even months.<\/p>\n

\u201cResearch agencies are pretty limited in people power,\u201d Kissel said. \u201cIt\u2019s not one of those cases where AI is taking someone else\u2019s job \u2014 it\u2019s a case where AI is helping make things more efficient so that other people can spend time on other important issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

USGS partnered with Everglades National Park for this project as a way to monitor large areas for tegus while reducing people power.<\/p>\n

The AI tool isn\u2019t yet publicly available, but researchers plan to release it after the study is published; once available, Kissel said she hopes it will help state, local and federal agencies monitor these populations better.<\/p>\n

Similarly, researchers at the University of Florida, in collaboration with Wild Vision Systems, are piloting AI smart traps for these lizards \u2014 a tool that they say eliminates unwanted catches and cuts down on labor.<\/p>\n

Users can monitor the devices remotely through a phone app. A camera identifies only tegus, and \u201cwhen the tegu [comes] into the trap, the camera will \u2026 recognize it as a tegu and it will shut the doors,\u201d said Melissa Miller, an assistant professor of invasive wildlife ecology at UF.<\/p>\n

The goal is to make the smart traps available to anyone who would like to use them, including natural resource managers, researchers and the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you did happen to get a bycatch species that was erroneously trapped, you\u2019ll get a notification on your phone,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it really helps cut down on the amount of time that you have to be in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also said that in addition to the labor, this technology is good for trapping in either hard-to-access areas or areas that are biologically sensitive, such as places with endangered or at-risk species \u2014 where natural resource managers\u00a0may not want someone going every day to check the traps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a pilot study using the smart traps and compared it with the traditional traps, and it reduced labor costs by 87% and reduced bycatch by 95%,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Still, the system can occasionally trap the wrong animal, such as box turtles, which have a similar coloring to a tegu. UF and conservation technology company Wild Vision are now seeking money for a second generation trap to make the technology more useful and accessible to people who are managing invasive species.<\/p>\n

AI is also being used to assess invasion risks of species.<\/p>\n

The Asian swamp eel, a fish native to East and Southeast Asia, is one of the top targets for USGS\u2019s Wetland and Aquatic Research Center<\/a>. Some scientists consider it even more disruptive than pythons, since it attacks the food chain at its base, reducing the organisms that all other life depends on; every level of the food chain relies on the level below it.<\/p>\n

Here, AI\u2019s role is less about spotting animals in the field and more about digging through mountains of research.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of times when we\u2019re thinking about risk, there\u2019s a lot of literature review \u2026 so we\u2019re using [AI] to help speed that process of review and pull out that important information to help us inform these assessments,\u201d said fish biologist Wesley Daniel, who specializes in detecting species early enough to stop them from becoming too abundant. \u201cWe\u2019re using AI to help dig through literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the team were assessing the risk of a Tegu lizard, for example, the researchers would need to know its life history, such as how many eggs it lays, how quickly it matures, when it starts reproducing and what it eats; AI helps pull that information together quickly.<\/p>\n

Another analytical AI tool can answer the question \u201cWhere should I go python hunting tonight?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than leaning on gut instinct, this model has years of hunt data to predict where a python is most likely to turn up on any given day.<\/p>\n

Python contractors already log their routes, and researchers layer that with factors like temperature, humidity, habitat type, season and water levels. Before a hunter heads out, the model can estimate the odds of finding a python at different locations.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The model would] be able to predict in real time where the best spots to go are,\u201d Miller said. \u201cIf you go to this spot, spot A, what is your probability of finding a python versus spot B?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Florida\u2019s invasive species problem has become what some experts call an ecological disaster. Burmese pythons have wiped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[8019,192,2808,84793,2558,31040,3,79,5262],"class_list":["post-804154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-broward-county","tag-environment","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami-dade-county","tag-news","tag-science","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}