Announcing Our Pilot Project in Salonga National Park

We’re not just excited: we’re curious. Next month the Geome team will pack up a few terabytes of edge‑AI kit and head for Salonga National Park, the vast, swamp‑laced forest in the heart of the Congo Basin. Why? Because we think machine learning can help guardians of wild places see what’s happening in real time—but we also know bold claims deserve proof on the ground.

Why Bonobos?

Salonga shelters one of the last great communities of the Endangered Bonobo (Pan paniscus). These primates are outrageously social, famously gentle, and, according to the IUCN, sliding toward extinction. If our sensors can reliably pick up their calls, map their range, and flag disturbances quickly, we’ll have more than a nice demo: we’ll have a tool rangers can use before trouble turns into tragedy.

Field Lab, Not PowerPoint

Talk about technology is cheap; lugging solar panels, GPUs, and microscopes 400 km up the Congo River is not. We’re building a small, solar‑powered edge‑AI laboratory in the park’s central camp so our biologists and engineers can sift data the same day it’s captured. If the models stumble, we’ll know before the next patrol heads out.

Timeline & Open Questions

We’ll be on site from 1 June – 30 September 2025. During that window we hope to answer three blunt questions: Can our rigs survive rainforest humidity? Do our algorithms detect bonobo vocalisations better than trained ears? And can any of this help ICCN rangers intervene faster when threats appear? If the answer to any of these is “no,” we’ll say so publicly and fix it.

Have doubts, ideas, or partnerships in mind? Contact us, or join the conversation on X and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear why you think this will or won’t—work.