Finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs
Our business
We operate in 35 countries where our 57,000 employees are working to find better ways to provide the materials the world needs
Our purpose in action
Continuous improvement and innovation are part of our DNA
Innovation
The need for innovation is greater than ever
We supply the metals and minerals used to help the world grow and decarbonise
Iron Ore
The primary raw material used to make steel, which is strong, long-lasting and cost-efficient
Lithium
The lightest of all metals, it is a key element needed for low-carbon technologies
Copper
Tough but malleable, corrosion-resistant and recyclable, and an excellent conductor of heat and transmitter of electricity
Bringing to market materials critical to urbanisation and the transition to a low-carbon economy
Oyu Tolgoi
One of the most modern, safe and sustainable operations in the world
Rincon Project
A long-life, low-cost and low-carbon lithium source
Simandou Project
The world’s largest untapped high-grade iron ore deposit
Providing materials the world needs in a responsible way
Climate Change
We’re targeting net zero emissions by 2050
Nature solutions
Our nature-based solutions projects complement the work we're doing to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions
Decarbonisation progress update
We have a clear plan on decarbonisation - find out more about our progress in 2024
We aim to deliver superior returns to our shareholders while safeguarding the environment and meeting our obligations to wider society
Investor seminars
Our Investor seminar will be held in London on 4 December, and our Decarbonisation update on 5 December
Get the latest news, stories and updates
Things you can't live without
Our podcast discussing what needs to happen to create a sustainable future for the everyday items we have come to rely on
The 'f' word of innovation
How unlocking innovation requires a change of mindset
Reducing titanium oxide's carbon footprint
Our BlueSmelting technology could drastically reduce carbon emissions during ore processing
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It’s a steamy summer sunrise in Far North Queensland, Australia.
Our small group steps as quietly as we can through the leafy bush as we look up, carefully scanning each branch, hoping to win the bird-watching lottery.
“Quick – up in that tree!” Each of us peers through binoculars in turn, catching glimpses of sleek black feathers and bright red cheeks before the majestic parrot takes flight.
We’re now among the lucky few who have seen the elusive palm cockatoo in the wild.
Our guide, Celina, was a Threatened Species Researcher at our bauxite operations at Weipa. She’s driven us deep into the bush at the crack of dawn to see firsthand these rare birds she’s so passionate about conserving.
As the leader of our Palm Cockatoo Research Program, Celina worked with colleagues and industry experts to improve palm cockatoo conservation using a tool you might not expect – machine learning.
We are dependent on healthy ecosystems to run a successful business and we recognise our responsibility to effectively mitigate the impact of our operations on nature
Palm cockatoos are a pretty big deal. Literally. Of the 28 cockatoo species found across Australia and South-East Asia, they’re the largest – fully grown, they’re around 60 centimetres (2 feet) tall, nearly a third bigger than their common sulphur-crested cousins.
They’re also , thanks to their – they’re the only bird in the world that manufactures drumsticks to drum with the same rudiments as human instrumental music.
But numbers of these avian rockstars are also dramatically declining in Cape York Peninsula, their only stronghold in Australia. They’re , who only breed once every two years on average, and lay a single egg with low offspring success when they do.
Palm cockatoos nest on the lands where we mine bauxite at Weipa. So when we clear land for mining, we survey carefully to make sure we’re not impacting their breeding habitat.
After a lot of walking through the bush, when our teams find a suitable nesting hollow, we use camera “traps” to confirm their breeding sites, and then create a permanent buffer of trees around their hollow until the tree falls of natural causes.
Across a huge mining site, though, it’s a challenge to manually achieve this at such a large scale. So we’re working with technology partners to streamline how we identify certain breeding behaviour on camera traps, which also helps us gather important data on nesting success.
Previously, our ecologists had to create datasets by manually poring over each image to find and tag cockatoos. But we’re now trialling a machine-learning pipeline that’s helping us significantly speed up the process.
We’ve trained an open-source model base – an object-detection model called YOLOv5, short for ‘you only look once’ – to identify palm cockatoos and their competitors in images. It can process thousands of images rapidly, sort them into classes and make verifying images much easier.
The unique way we deploy the camera traps was . The traps capture roughly 20,000 time-lapse images at each nesting hollow every three weeks.
“As a conservation tool, this has the potential to help our team identify key areas of critical nesting habitat for long-term protection, without limiting our research aims by using resources on data review,” Celina says.
The trained model also reduces double-handling and data entry, and each reviewed image also goes straight into the broader dataset for automatic model retraining.
So we can spend less time analysing and entering data, and more on understanding the attendance patterns, breeding behaviour and timelines of nest success or failure.
We’re using this insight to prepare better land management strategies.
"Minimising the manual data review means we can increase our research effort,” Celina says.
“We’re aiming to use those freed up resources to understand more about how these birds breed across the wider landscape, and how many breeding hollows each pair maintains and defends in their network.”
The initial trial was successful. We already had the most comprehensive long-term breeding-behaviour dataset for the palm cockatoo to date, which provided the initial training data. Now, we have more than 10,000 images tagged to identify the cockatoos, with more added regularly.
The model’s reliability and accuracy will continue to improve as it develops, meaning we can refocus our research resources for broader work in the field, like targeting entire hollow networks to better understand how pairs select and defend their breeding sites.
We’re also exploring how we can adapt the model for other types of conservation research.
"Palm cockatoos have such unique and complex calls, and each population has slight differences in their primary contact calls,” Celina says.
“So, thanks to our Brisbane team, we’re trialling a proof-of-concept model to process bioacoustic data as well. A call recogniser for palm cockatoos could shed some more light on how closely connected these populations are, and add another feasible survey tool to our kit.”
“The underlying architecture and process could also translate well to other applications, sites and species – as long as someone is happy to do some initial hard yards of manual tagging!”
The second phase of the trial was successfully completed in 2023, and we have now operationalised the technology, using it as part of our annual Palm Cockatoo hollow monitoring program. This innovation and use of AI has significantly reduced data analysis and processing times, freeing resources up to focus on other conservation and land management projects.
Header image: Celina Cacho
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With the exception of the use of cookies (explained below), vloggenerally does not seek to collect personal data through this website. However if you choose to provide personal data to vlogthrough this website (for example, by sending us an email), we will process that personal data to answer your query and if relevant, to manage our business relationship with you or your company. We won't process that personal data for other purposes except where required to meet our legal obligations or otherwise as authorised by law and notified to you.
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