AI and digitisation are giving scientists a new weapon against the biodiversity crisis

A new report is making a bold claim: the technology that powers your smartphone could help save the world's plants and fungi from extinction.

Published on Tuesday, the study gathered insights from over 400 global experts on how digitisation and artificial intelligence are reshaping conservation. The message is clear — we aren't using tech nearly enough.

The report, compiled by a coalition of research institutions, argues that digitising plant and fungi collections — think scanning millions of dried specimens in museums — could unlock data scientists need to track species loss in real time. AI can then analyse that data to predict which species are at risk and where to focus protection efforts.

Right now, most conservation decisions rely on outdated field surveys. The report says technology could speed things up dramatically. For example, AI-powered image recognition can identify a plant from a photo taken on a phone, helping citizen scientists contribute to global databases.

The experts also flagged a major bottleneck: funding. Many herbaria and seed banks in developing countries lack the equipment to digitise their collections. Without investment, the tech gap will widen.

But the potential payoff is huge. Plants and fungi form the backbone of ecosystems — they provide food, medicine, and clean air. Losing them means losing the services nature gives us for free.

The report comes as the world struggles to meet the 2020 targets of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. With a new set of goals for 2030, the authors hope technology can help countries track progress faster and cheaper.

South Africa is already a player in this space. The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) runs digitisation projects for its massive plant collection. But experts say much more is needed.

For the average person, this matters because the apps and tools being developed could eventually let anyone become a conservationist. Snap a photo of a strange plant, upload it, and AI tells you what it is and whether it's endangered.

The report isn't all optimism. It warns that algorithms can carry biases — if training data is mostly from wealthy countries, the AI might miss species in poorer regions. And digitisation alone won't save a species if its habitat is being bulldozed.

Still, the authors are clear: the biodiversity crisis is moving fast, and technology is one of the few tools that can keep up. The question now is whether governments and donors will fund the digital revolution conservation needs.