The biodiversity of our planet is under threat, with approximately one million species expected to become extinct within decades. The reason; negative human actions, which include hunting, overfishing, pollution, and the conversion of land for urbanisation and agricultural purposes. Despite significant investment from charities and governments for activities that benefit nature, global wildlife populations continue to decline. Local wildlife guardians have historically played a critical role in global conservation efforts and have shown their ability to achieve sustainability at various levels. In 2021, COP26 recognised their contributions and pledged US$1.7 billion per year; however, this is a fraction of the global biodiversity budget available (between US$124 billion and US$143 billion annually) given they protect 80% of the planets biodiversity. This paper proposes a radical new solution based on "Interspecies Money," where animals own their own money. Creating a digital twin for each species allows animals to dispense funds to their guardians for the services they provide. For example, a rhinoceros may release a payment to its guardian each time it is detected in a camera trap as long as it remains alive and well. To test the efficacy of this approach 27 camera traps were deployed over a 400km2 area in Welgevonden Game Reserve in Limpopo Province in South Africa. The motion-triggered camera traps were operational for ten months and, using deep learning, we managed to capture images of 12 distinct animal species. For each species, a makeshift bank account was set up and credited with {\pounds}100. Each time an animal was captured in a camera and successfully classified, 1 penny (an arbitrary amount - mechanisms still need to be developed to determine the real value of species) was transferred from the animal account to its associated guardian.

翻译：地球的生物多样性正面临威胁，预计在未来几十年内将有约一百万种物种灭绝。其原因是人类的负面行为，包括狩猎、过度捕捞、污染以及将土地转为城市化和农业用途。尽管慈善机构和政府对有益于自然的活动进行了大量投资，但全球野生动物种群数量仍在持续下降。当地野生动物守护者在历史上曾对全球保护工作发挥关键作用，并展示了他们在不同层面实现可持续性的能力。2021年，COP26认可了他们的贡献，并承诺每年提供17亿美元；然而，这只占全球生物多样性可用预算（每年1240亿至1430亿美元）的一小部分，因为他们保护了地球80%的生物多样性。本文提出了一种基于“跨物种货币”的全新解决方案，即动物拥有自己的货币。为每个物种创建数字孪生体，使动物能够为其守护者提供的服务支付资金。例如，只要犀牛保持存活且健康，每次在相机陷阱中被检测到时，它可能会向守护者支付一笔款项。为了测试这种方法的有效性，我们在南非林波波省韦尔格冯登野生动物保护区的一个400平方公里区域内部署了27个相机陷阱。这些运动触发的相机陷阱运行了10个月，通过深度学习，我们成功捕捉到了12种不同动物物种的图像。为每个物种设立了一个临时银行账户，并存入100英镑。每当一种动物被相机捕捉并成功分类时，1便士（任意金额——仍需开发机制来确定物种的真实价值）从动物账户转移到其关联的守护者账户。