AI transforms China's conservation efforts

Artificial intelligence is reshaping China's environmental protection efforts, with pilot projects showing a 90 percent cut in labor costs for biodiversity monitoring, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

"AI is gradually changing how people produce, live, and work,"Wang Zhibin, director of the ministry's Department of Science, Technology and Finance, said at a news conference on Monday. "I think in the future, AI will be as indispensable as the smartphones we use today."

Wang noted that the term "artificial intelligence" appears 30 times in the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), reflecting the technology's growing strategic importance in the country.

As the ministry advances efforts to implement central authorities' directives on building "Digital China" and promoting the Beautiful China Initiative, it has leveraged digital technologies such as AI, big data and cloud computing as key tools to modernize environmental governance systems and capacity, he said.

Through major national science and technology projects, the ministry has deployed over 90 initiatives to advance new technologies across various application scenarios, he added.

AI technology, for instance, is being gradually embedded into the country's ecological and environmental monitoring system, he said.

"Using technologies such as bird image and acoustic recognition, along with intelligent plant species image recognition, we have shifted monitoring from an annual exercise to year-round continuous observation," he said.

In Jiangsu province, for example, 98 bird acoustic recognition devices have been installed at 20 biodiversity observation stations, he said. Since their installation in 2023, the devices have collected nearly 440,000 data entries covering 243 bird species, reducing labor costs by 90 percent.

Demonstrating a portable 1-kilogram lidar system, Wang said the AI-powered device can complete a 400-square-meter forest scan in just 10 minutes, capturing precise data of tree height, canopy width, and diameter.

He compared the process to a "CT scan", adding that such technology can help establish comprehensive ecological records and, through consistent monitoring, enable clear observation of forest evolution over time.

AI has also significantly bolstered the ministry's off-site environmental law enforcement capabilities, Wang said.

Intelligent recognition technology based on large models is now being applied to identify vehicle inspection fraud and illegal emissions from heavy-duty vehicles, with an accuracy rate exceeding 70 percent, he said. To date, the technology has helped screen trillions of data entries, significantly reducing costs in environmental supervision.

Looking ahead, Wang said the ministry will increase support for AI research in the environmental protection sector and accelerate development of an integrated sky-ground-sea intelligent sensing network to fully unlock the potential of "AI plus" in environmental governance.

houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn