wilderlab

What is your innovation?

Tree-of-life environmental DNA monitoring

Wilderlab provides environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis to measure biodiversity from simple water or soil samples, enabling scalable, cost-effective monitoring of ecosystems to support conservation, restoration, and climate resilience efforts.

Wilderlab uses eDNA to detect biodiversity across the tree of life from small water or soil/sediment samples. By analysing multiple genetic markers, we can identify fish, mammals, birds, invertebrates, plants and microbial communities from a single sample.

This approach enables broad, repeatable biodiversity monitoring without the need for complex field surveys. It is particularly valuable in remote or logistically challenging environments, where traditional ecological monitoring is costly and difficult to scale.

Our outputs provide clear insights into species presence and ecosystem condition, supporting better environmental decision-making.

How does your innovation specifically apply to the Pacific region and its people?

Pacific Island communities face significant challenges from climate change, including ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and reduced resilience of coastal and marine environments.

Wilderlab’s eDNA approach provides a practical way to monitor biodiversity and ecosystem health using simple, low-impact sampling methods that can be carried out by local teams. This is particularly valuable in remote island contexts where access to specialist survey expertise is limited.

By enabling regular, repeatable monitoring, eDNA helps track how ecosystems are responding to climate pressures such as warming oceans, changing rainfall patterns, and habitat loss. This supports more informed decision-making around conservation, restoration, and sustainable resource management.

The approach is innovative because it captures broad biodiversity signals (from fish to microbes) from a single sample, providing a more complete picture of ecosystem condition. It can also be integrated with community-based monitoring programs, supporting local capacity building and culturally appropriate environmental stewardship.

One of the main challenges in applying eDNA is ensuring sufficient reference data for local species, particularly in biodiverse and under-studied regions such as the Pacific.

We address this by continuously expanding and curating our reference databases, and by working with partners to improve coverage where needed.

Are there examples of this working in the region?

Wilderlab has delivered eDNA monitoring across a range of environments such as freshwater, marine, and terrestrial systems in Australia, New Zealand, and internationally, including the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu and more.

Projects have included biodiversity assessments for government agencies, conservation organisations, and industry clients, as well as supporting baseline monitoring and long-term ecological studies. Our work has demonstrated the ability to detect a wide range of species, including rare and cryptic taxa, across diverse environments.

We’ve supported a range of projects through partnerships with local organisations and consultancies. For example, we delivered an eDNA workshop in Fiji a couple of years ago, and our services are currently being used by consultancies working on the Tina River Hydropower Project in the Solomon Islands.

More broadly, our approach is to focus on providing robust, accredited eDNA sample processing and molecular expertise, while partnering with organisations on the ground who are better placed to lead engagement and build capacity with local stakeholders. Examples of this include collaborations with Conservation International in Fiji (Lau Island Seascape Project), the Muri Environment Care and the National Environment Service in Rarotonga, as well as a number of smaller projects across the Pacific where we’ve contributed analytical support.

In terms of how the data are applied, eDNA currently offers strong value for early detection of invasive species and for establishing baseline distributions of threatened or culturally important species to inform conservation and environmental management. Looking ahead, there is growing potential to use these datasets to track changes in ecosystem health under shifting environmental conditions, and to support mechanisms such as biodiversity credit schemes.

On local capacity building, our model is intentionally collaborative – rather than centralising all capability, we aim to support regional partners by providing high-quality lab processing and expertise alongside training, knowledge sharing, and integration with local monitoring programmes. We see this as the most practical and scalable pathway in the near term, while recognising that distributed laboratory capacity may become increasingly feasible over time.

How can it be replicated and upscaled in other PICTs?

The approach is highly scalable as it relies on simple, standardised sampling methods that can be deployed across many sites with minimal equipment.

Samples can be collected by local communities, rangers, or field teams with basic training, and then shipped to the laboratory for analysis. This allows biodiversity monitoring programs to be expanded across regions and repeated over time at relatively low cost.

Because the method is standardised, results can be compared across locations and time periods, supporting regional-scale monitoring and collaboration across Pacific Island countries.

What are the next steps for this innovation?

This technology is ready to be used at scale. Wilderlab is focused on expanding the use of eDNA for large-scale, repeatable biodiversity monitoring, particularly in regions where traditional monitoring is difficult to implement.

Future work includes expanding reference databases for Pacific species to improve detection

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