PRESS RELEASE: Save The World’s Rivers launches new campaign, “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO PROTECT AND RESTORE RIVERS”

January 5, 2026
For Immediate Release

Save The World’s Rivers launches new campaign, “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO PROTECT AND RESTORE RIVERS”

Contact: Gary Wockner, gary@savetheworldsrivers.org

“The river conservation community needs to assert itself in this rapidly expanding field so that the technology and tools also support conservation goals — if we are not at the table as AI escalates, we will be on the menu and devoured.” — Gary Wockner

Earth’s Rivers: Today, Save The World’s Rivers (STWR) announces the launch of a new campaign, “Artificial Intelligence to Protect and Restore Rivers.” The campaign’s goal is to help catalyze the development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in support of

healthier and freer-flowing Rivers in the U.S. and across the planet.

“2025 saw an explosion in the development of Artificial Intelligence. In 2026, we need to see a similar explosion in how AI is developed for environmental conservation and specifically for river protection and restoration,” said Gary Wockner, director of Save The World’s Rivers.

Save The World’s River has initially identified 10 applications for how AI can be developed and deployed to protect and restore rivers, posted here on its website. A few of these applications are already occurring, a few can move forward with additional development, and a few are conceptual.

“One of the most exciting applications currently deployed is in dam removal where AI-assisted modeling can help remove dams and support the restoration of fish species,” said Wockner, citing work led by the NGO, California Trout, on the Klamath River.

More generally, the Bezos Earth Fund (a philanthropic subsidiary of Amazon) has been leading the pack of AI companies to develop and deploy the technology to protect and restore the environment. However, applications involving river protection are very rare.

Save The World’s Rivers campaign seeks to:

• Connect with AI developers who want to focus on river conservation,
• Educate the public, media, and decision-makers about the need for AI in river conservation,
• And, work with AI companies and their philanthropies to highlight how the tools can be developed and deployed to support river conservation.

“So far, the development and use of AI in the water sector has mostly focused on government and for-profit applications that primarily seek to extract water resources and use water more efficiently, rather than to protect and restore rivers,” said Wockner.  “The river conservation community needs to assert itself in this rapidly expanding field so that the technology and tools also support conservation goals — if we are not at the table as AI escalates, we will be on the menu and devoured.”

“Ultimately, a Superintelligent AI must recognize that the protection and restoration of Nature on Earth is the critical path forward for sustaining humanity,” continued Wockner. “Nature isn’t a piece of the economic pie; it is the crust that holds the pie together, and rivers are the veins flowing through that crust keeping it all alive.”

This press release is posted here on our website.

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