We Are a Team of Dedicated Technologists Who Want to Help Anyone Understand and Then Improve Biodiversity on Their Sites or Landscapes
During Covid lockdown we had the time and space to reflect on what’s important to us as individuals (aside from family and health of course) and that was helping improve our environment.
The UK (where we are based) is one of the most degraded countries in the world for biodiversity – we are in the bottom 10%. Looking out of the window it appears to be healthy with green trees and vibrant colours across the landscape.
Understanding the Problem
Many of our native birds, bats, insects, mammals, plants, fish and reptiles are under real pressure with more being designated as being endangered each year. So what could we do about it…
Better understanding of any problem is directly informed by having better data – and that’s really hard to collect and get accurate time series data using current site survey methods – although they are really important to ground-truth the results.
There has been fantastic academic research carried out into bioacoustics in many universities around the world notably by Cornell University in the US, amongst others.
The various approaches, models etc which had been developed were hard to use by non-technologists – with the clear exception of consumer apps such as BirdNET and Merlin which are fantastic. These, however, don’t provide long term data sets required for good surveys. We couldn’t find an easy to use solution to measure nature – so we built one – Wilder Sensing.
We ran many trials across the UK and elsewhere in 2022/23 and by late 2023 we knew we had a robust platform that scaled, was accurate and is cost effective for our customers. We launched our first product in late 2023 and the uptake has been excellent.
Birds are our first target group – we have a whole pipeline of new solutions coming all using sound in novel ways to better understand how biodiversity is changing.
The Team
Geoffrey Carss
CEO and Founder
Geoff Carss is the founder and CEO of Wilder Sensing and Ethos Wilder. Growing up in Botswana and Northumberland he really enjoyed getting close to nature.
After obtaining multiple degrees in Geology, Geoff started a successful career as a Technologist, Entrepreneur and Environmental Advocate. He also served on the Board of Directors in a number of technology startups, and as trustee for the Bristol Avon Rivers Trust.
After observing the continued decline of biodiversity in the UK and around the world, Geoff started the Wilder Sensing project in order to bring the latest technologies to the environmental debate. His vision is to enable a more evidence based approach to addressing our environmental challenges.
Lorenzo Trojan
CTO and Co-Founder
With a PhD in Astrophysics and a decade long experience in technical leadership roles within high growth tech start-ups, Lorenzo has built over the years a broad experience in a diverse range of technologies including Remote Sensing, Cloud Computing, DevOps and AI.
Dr. Trojan supports inclusiveness, openness, and personal growth within the work environment. He believes that technical excellence and the best products can only be built by highly performing and agile teams where each individual is given the best chance of contributing to the company goals.
Lorenzo joined Wilder Sensing in order to lead the technology team and help deliver a scalable, secure and user friendly platform that can transform our understanding of the natural world.
