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When anyone asks how I got into this line of work, I struggle to recall the exact moment that propelled me into conservation. What I do remember is the “future zookeeper” t-shirt I wore to preschool, rattling off facts from a DK Animal Encyclopedia at birthday parties, and making a special trip to the National Zoo to meet its first baby panda. My path toward conversation was in motion by the time I was in kindergarten.
A love of wildlife is something many of us share. As a conservationist (unfortunately not a zookeeper), I also know that saving species is complicated business, and it takes a smart toolkit to get the job done.
Over the years, I’ve seen how a “view from above” can offer powerful new perspectives to the work of stewarding wildlife and the places they depend on. But too often, the tools that unlock this insight have been out of reach for the teams that need them most. That’s where Lens comes in. By bringing remote sensing down to Earth, Lens empowers conservationists to scale their impact whether they’re restoring habitat, tracking migrations, or spotting threats to wildlife populations.
Today, let’s take a deep dive into the world of remote monitoring for wildlife. Because, just like when I was a kid, I still love sharing moments of wonder and connection with wildlife—only now, the view is from space.
Restoring and rewilding habitat offers a critical foothold for wildlife to thrive, but it can be hard for conservationists playing the long game to see the impact of their on-the-ground efforts.
Take, for instance, this stream restoration project in Maryland, which started in 2010. After installing fencing to keep livestock out of the riparian area and revegetating the stream bank with native plants, it took about six years to see the restoration effort pay off. With high-resolution imagery in Lens, we can see just how dramatic this change was.
Before too long, beavers that had long been absent from the area found their way back, and began to transform the landscape yet again—this time without needing a helping hand. With remote monitoring, we can get an even deeper understanding of the impact these animals had on the landscape. Using tools like this surface moisture index, it's clear how this habitat began to improve for other wetland species once beavers returned.
On the other side of the country, state and federal agencies have also been hard at work for nearly 20 years to bring another keystone species back to the grasslands of southern Arizona. Black-tailed prairie dogs, which were extirpated from the state in the 1960s, were reintroduced to just three sites by state officials in 2008.
Prairie dogs act as “ecosystem engineers”, building networks of burrows that create habitat for many other grassland species. With only 36 acres of reintroduced prairie dog habitat so far in Arizona, high-resolution imagery can help us to keep an eye on these fragile habitats.
Sophisticated remote monitoring has often been out of reach for small-scale conservation efforts like these, but in Lens, we’re able to access high-quality imagery for just a few cents an acre, putting this data in the hands of the wildlife managers and stewards who can use these resources for the greatest impact at any scale.
For conservation organizations like California Waterfowl Association dedicated to protecting wildlife habitat, this accessibility translates directly into better stewardship outcomes.
"Lens software has been a game changer for California Waterfowl Association for efficiently and accurately monitoring our conservation easements to ensure that these critical habitats remain intact. Having the ability to utilize 0.3 meter resolution across large landscapes allows us to be targeted and precise in assuring these conservation properties are properly stewarded in perpetuity."
- Kevin Vella, Regional Biologist & Land Trust Coordinator, California Waterfowl Association
In many places, the biggest threat to and the biggest opportunity for wildlife conservation are often one in the same: human-wildlife coexistence. Monitoring wildlife habitat can also mean keeping an eye on the ways that people use and enjoy these same places.
Agriculture, logging, and other human activities can be major drivers of habitat loss, especially near protected areas. Understanding the context of what’s happening outside of a protected area’s boundaries can give us an important lens into how we can support its wildlife populations successfully.
Around the Tsaratanana Reserve in Madagascar, slash-and-burn agriculture and timber harvest for cooking fuel often encroach on forests that protect endangered species including endemic frogs, tenrecs, and lemurs. Managing this landscape takes an understanding of the needs of these at-risk species as well as the economic forces that drive people and wildlife into conflict over shared resources.
The hardest part of mitigating these threats is often understanding where and when they’re happening. Using automated alerts in Lens and up-to-date fire data, protected area managers and community partners can make informed decisions about how to effectively engage with communities.
Addo Elephant Park, South Africa's third-largest national park, is another place where people and wildlife often cross paths (literally!). Addo is home to over 600 African bush elephants and 48 endangered western black rhinos, and hosts over 300,000 safari-goers per year. Throughout the year, the water sources that elephants rely on shift, and we can trace their changing trails using high-resolution satellite imagery. This helps us get a sense of where the elephants’ paths might intersect with common safari routes. Here, we can even see where safari vehicles are stopped while the elephants cross the road!
While monitoring the places that support wildlife populations can give us important context, sometimes we actually want to see those individuals themselves. Monitoring wildlife populations often requires the finest-scale, highest-resolution data available, as well as a bit of luck.
Thankfully, we have access to all the top data sources in one place in Lens, so we can give ourselves the best shot at finding exactly the right images that help us keep an eye on the wildlife we aim to protect. Check out this massive flock of snow geese during the spring migration at Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in Missouri. By cross-referencing the time stamp of this satellite image with field observations from eBird, we know that nearly one million birds were seen within about an hour of this image being captured!
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Estimating large numbers of animals can obviously be a challenge, and it can be even harder when we’re dealing with sensitive species like marine mammals. Every year in Año Nuevo State Park in California, northern elephant seals come to shore during the breeding and molting seasons. Remote data helps us to keep a safe distance while making it easier to get a detailed count (over 300 here) of individuals on shore at any given time.
For our team, spotting an animal in Lens is like a surprise gift. And we always share with co-workers! When we find something interesting, we use the Notes feature to log our observations, adding detail so that anyone on our team can come back and check it out for themselves and add their own comments, too.
One of our favorites to come back to is off the coast of Churchill, Manitoba, where we often see pods of belugas—can you see their tail fins?
Lens powers sharing insights in more ways than one. When it comes to protecting species, conserving habitat, and defending our natural world, images play a critical role—inspiring others to get involved—which is why we made it easy to share imagery from Lens.
Here's an interactive share link so you can take a spin for yourself. Imagine: what stories could you tell about beluga migrations as Churchill’s sea ice melts?
Conservationists now have an extraordinarily rich toolkit at our fingertips to help us care for the life we share our planet with. With Lens, it’s easier than ever to tap into the best resources available to get started with remote monitoring and turn data into action. Just like that kid rattling off animal facts at birthday parties, I still love discovering and sharing new insights about wildlife—only now, Lens provides the tools to act on those insights at scale.
Ready to get started? Sign up today or talk to our team about how we can support your conservation work.
