Conservation Drones News

When they embarked upon an experiment to swab leaves at Kibale National Park in Uganda in June 2022, Christina Lynggaard, Jan Gogarten and Patrick Omeja had little to no expectations.…

This Mongabay Explains episode is part of a four-part Mongabay mini-series exploring the latest technological solutions to support reforestation. Read Part One, Part Two , Part Three and Part Four. “Plant…

How had we missed this until now? An undersea mountain as tall as three Eiffel Towers. DDT contamination spread across an area of the seabed as large as San Francisco.…

Debbie Saunders’s quest to make wildlife tracking more efficient started in the early 2000s. The wild ecologist was studying swift parrots (Lathamus discolor) in Australia and found it challenging to…

“O poplar tree, O poplar tree, how carbon-dense are thy branches …” Trees are a major tool in our fight against climate change by sucking up carbon dioxide, but one…

Conservation technologies like drones, remote sensing and machine learning have a massive role to play in aiding the work of conservation scientists and helping policymakers devise better-informed decisions about where…

It was supposed to be a night like any other. Luis Crespo and his team would walk the beach of Maunabo, Puerto Rico, looking for leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea).…

Drones flying above the treetops of a limestone forest on the border of Vietnam and China are helping conservationists develop plans to recover one of the world’s rarest primates: the…

Seed-sowing drones and the latest biotechnology could help restore degraded forests at an unprecedented scale — a high-tech nature-based climate solution already at work, and one that shows tremendous promise.

Climate change has generated a rush in tree planting, with many hurried initiatives failing. But high-tech solutions — artificial intelligence, robotics, satellites and sensors — can help tree-planting projects succeed every step of the way.

SINGAPORE — A huge drone hums and hovers above the canopy of a tree. Just as one might start to think that the show is over, the action begins. Slowly,…

SINGAPORE — Macaques look on from trees as a round of applause breaks out. After repeated attempts, a team has managed to fly a drone and drop a sensor platform…

SINGAPORE — It’s been a hectic few weeks for Kevin Marriott. On a humid May morning in Singapore, he shuttles between two locations at the city’s Windsor Nature Park. At…

KORK THLORK, Cambodia — Vorn Keo, perched on the edge of a green wooden boat, navigates through the flooded forest of Tonle Sap Lake and across the boundary into a…

Studying primates in the wild has historically been a tough task. Alexander Piel knows the challenges too well. Since 2005, the biological anthropologist has been studying primates in countries like…

Conservation apps have emerged in recent years as an efficient and cost-effective way to get citizens to monitor and document wildlife across the world. But an Australian initiative is going…

During what scientists have named the “Sixth Mass Extinction” (the fifth one wiped out the dinosaurs), conservationists are racing against the clock to carry out critical monitoring as quickly as…

Tropical forests across the world are hurting. Climate change is intensifying drought and wildfires worldwide, and deforestation continues to challenge conservation efforts to save intact forests. This means scientists need…

Mayra Estrella’s father always spoke to her about sea turtles. Growing up, she remembers hearing stories linking a pair of turtles to the very existence of the Comcáac people, the…

Threats to wildlife and wild places abound. Waters warming due to climate change threaten coral reefs more frequently and with greater intensity than ever before; the expansion of agriculture, infrastructure,…

Teaching Indigenous communities in the Amazon to tap on remote-monitoring technologies during forest patrols can reduce illegal deforestation, a new study has found. Researchers, whose work was published July 12…

A total of 33 teams spanning 16 countries from Brazil to India have been chosen to advance to the next stage of a five-year, $10 million competition aimed at preserving…

Rodger Schlickeisen made a name for himself in conservation circles from the early 1990s thanks to his leadership at Defenders of Wildlife, which grew rapidly in membership and influence during…

In 2019, XPRIZE Rainforest opened its doors and challenged the world to develop new biodiversity assessment technologies by offering a $10 million prize for the best one. The consequent mobilization will extend…

When Sellemah was a girl, in the days when the Tl’ches archipelago was still inhabited, the tide pools were full of urchins. The Songhees Nation elder, who also goes by the…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we implemented a travel moratorium for staff and contributing journalists in March 2020. In practice, this meant we stopped assigning stories that required travel…

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — To achieve its ambitious large-scale reforestation goals, Madagascar is turning to the sky. The country will use drones to plant trees in isolated areas. The plan is…

Up in the cool Mexican mountains, countless monarch butterflies gather together for the winter. When the sun warms their wings to just the right temperature, the mass of monarchs take…

In March 2020, just prior to COVID-19 being a pandemic, I spent a few days in the tri-border region of Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. There I used a drone to…

In early March 2020, I visited the tri-border area of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil and used the opportunity to explore a cluster of potential deforestation hotspots detected by Global Forest…