This project is one of many our team is conducting that use innovative methods to capture wildlife data, enabling us to design conservation initiatives that protect and restore wildlife in our Wildway landscapes.
Elsewhere in the Western Wildway, we’re developing and testing a remote system using aerial and satellite imagery combined with deep-learning models to map active prairie dog colonies effectively and efficiently. Current practices relying on field data are too slow or insufficiently broad to capture landscape-level changes in prairie dog populations, which often occur due to plague. Faster information flow will help with quicker conservation decision-making to support prairie dogs, the endangered black-footed ferret, and prairie ecosystems generally.
And we’re continuing to monitor pronghorn with GPS collars in and around large solar energy developments. Part of a multi-year study to assess how pronghorn and other animals are responding to increased solar development, which is planned across tens of thousands of acres in the Southwest alone. With this groundbreaking research, Wildlands Network is taking a leading role in understanding how large mammals behave and move near solar facilities.
We already have great insights into pronghorn behavior and needs from this study, and, incidentally, we documented one of our favorite yet rarely observed natural surprises: mutualism between coyotes and badgers.
