A unified three-branch deep learning framework for automated detection and counting of wildlife in aerial imagery

Automating aerial wildlife surveys requires reliable animal detection, consistent delineation of observation strips, and correction for repeated coverage between successive images. We present a unified three-branch deep learning framework that integrates these tasks through WildSeg, WildMatch and WildDet. WildSeg combines rod segmentation with geometric refinement to delineate counting strips from aircraft-mounted markers. WildMatch uses teacher-student distillation to learn dense image correspondences and identify overlapping survey areas without relying on geolocation metadata. WildDet combines dual-scale detection with feature fusion, density supervision and empty-image gating to support animal detection and counting. We evaluated the framework using oblique aerial imagery of four antelope species from the Great Nile Migration Landscape in South Sudan. WildSeg achieved reliable rod extraction, while WildMatch approached teacher-level accuracy with a substantially lighter and faster model. Both modules maintained high accuracy on resized images, improving processing efficiency. WildDet improved detection performance across all four species and reduced detection-based count MAE, RMSE and mean bias by 21.0%, 4.6% and 27.8%, respectively, relative to YOLO11. By connecting spatial survey constraints with animal detection, the framework provides a practical and computationally efficient approach to processing large aerial image collections for wildlife monitoring and population surveys.