Animals don’t care much about satellites. The American elk doesn’t ponder orbital mechanics any more than the Eurasian brown bear contemplates the application of radar.
What happens thousands of miles above their heads, in the infinite quiet of space, seems as far removed from their concerns as moon landings are from ant colonies.
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But here’s the paradox: what happens in space matters deeply. Those tireless satellites, spinning around our planet at unimaginable speeds, are acting as guardians of some of its most vulnerable inhabitants. Whether tracking the migratory journeys of bar-tailed godwits, flying 29,000km without so much as a rest stop, or a tiger threading its way through fragmented forests in Asia, satellites are one of conservation’s sharpest tools – ever watchful, precise and unflinchingly reliable.
“Space technology gives us the ability to assess the health of forests, track deforestation, predict wildfires and measure the full extent of the human influence on landscapes and wildlife habitats,” explains Antoine Rostand, president and co-founder of satellite and enviro-intelligence firm Kayrros. “We can apply it anywhere on the planet and we can use it non-intrusively – there’s not always the need to put boots on the ground and disturb the environment to get a comprehensive read on local conditions.”
From Paris to the Amazon
It’s a striking thought that, from an office in Paris, Rostand’s team can zoom down into the Amazon basin and pinpoint a single fire glowing beneath the dense canopy. A farmer’s controlled burn or the first flickers of illegal logging? The satellites hold the evidence and their findings ripple outwards, shaping decisions and ecosystems in ways that may echo for generations.
Satellites circle the Earth, capturing vital data. Key players include NASA’s Landsat series, the European Space Agency’s Sentinel missions and commercial platforms such as the Dove satellite constellation, run by satellite imagery company Planet Labs. Together, they provide high-resolution pictures and data critical for conservation. Many of these satellites operate in what’s known as low-Earth orbit, skimming between 500 and 1,200km above the surface of the planet. Others, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES satellites, monitor things further up in a geostationary orbit some 36,000km high. Matching the Earth’s rotational speed, they appear locked in place and can continually observe a given region.
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Travelling faster than the speed of sound, these satellites capture landscapes using sensors that read light, heat and radar. Sentinel-1, for example, monitors deforestation, floods and ice loss with radar imaging, while Sentinel-2 deploys optical sensors to detect subtle shifts in vegetation health, land use and water quality.
Data streams back to Earth, decoded by ground stations and processed by AI. Machine learning algorithms sift through the imagery, identifying patterns and anomalies – a burned clearing, a wildlife corridor, an encroaching wildfire. They also ‘clean’ the data, refining it to remove unwanted detail such as clouds, smog, reflections and lightning storms.
“From the satellites that capture raw imagery to the observation tools that crunch the data, space tech plays a huge role in protecting the natural world,” says Rostand. “It’s crucial to the fight against climate change and the despoliation of nature.”
How space tech is helping tigers
The tiger epitomises what’s at stake. There are fewer than 4,000 of these cats left in the wild, and their very survival depends on understanding their movements and habitats and protecting them from the many threats they face. Satellites offer a perspective impossible to achieve from the ground that reveals the balance between wilderness and encroaching human activity. Scientists can combine the incoming data from space with knowledge from the ground to map not just where tigers are today but where they might thrive tomorrow.
“We can see exactly where forests are shrinking, map corridors for safe movement and focus resources where they’re most needed,” says Rostand.
NASA in particular has played a major role in safeguarding tigers. Working with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the agency has developed tools that utilise data and imagery from satellites to help researchers monitor changes in tiger habitats, in near-real time. This approach has been instrumental in identifying ‘empty forests’ – areas of suitable habitat that currently lack tiger populations – and it has the potential to increase the land base for tigers by as much as 50 per cent, creating new opportunities for reintroduction and restoration.
The Human Footprint Index, built from satellite imagery, also plays a crucial role in these efforts. It overlays data on human density, road networks and railways to assess the impact of development across Asia. As Dale Miquelle of the WCS explains, the data not only highlights pressures on existing tiger populations but also guides conservationists to areas where reintroduction efforts could succeed.
These insights are contributing to the creation of Tiger Conservation Landscapes (TCLs) – regions identified as critical for tiger survival. Marked in dark orange on satellite-derived maps, TCLs represent 63 strongholds for tigers across Asia. These sites are not just priority areas for tigers, they’re hubs of biodiversity that also shelter myriad other species, provide ecosystem services to local communities and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Space tech, then, not only has the power to safeguard one species but can secure the future of ecosystems that sustain life across Asia.
AI and accountability
Yet satellites don’t just track wildlife. They can also shine an unforgiving light on our own human activity, whether it’s deforestation, the continuing urban sprawl or industrial pollution. They can reveal the full scale of our impact on the world around us. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Amazon rainforest.
Spanning nine countries and covering 5.5m km2, the Amazon is often (and rightly) referred to as the ‘lungs of the Earth’. Its health is vital to global biodiversity and carbon cycles.
Satellites can, if deployed, monitor the Amazon’s every breath: every acre burned, every illegal road carved through its woodland. “By bouncing signals off the forest canopy, satellites can measure the height of trees, detect illegal deforestation and gauge the progress of reforestation,” explains Bogdan Gogulan of NewSpace Capital, a firm of investors targeting spacetech with a green edge.
This is particularly important when we consider the need to accurately report forest-based carbon offsetting, green bonds or reforestation projects from companies. In order to challenge the under-reporting or exaggeration of green performance, you need verifiable, irrefutable data.
Gogulan also highlights the broader impact. “Satellites optimise transit and energy, which translates to lower emissions and less global warming. Inmarsat, a British satellite telecommunications company, has found that satellites are already lowering global carbon emissions by 1.5bn tonnes annually – equivalent to nearly four times the UK’s emissions in 2021.”
Yet even the brightest stars cast shadows, and satellites are no exception. While they peer at our ecosystems, their own existence is not without cost. The carbon footprint of launching an orbiting emissary into space, coupled with the energy demands of the sprawling data centres that store their findings, is a weighty contradiction. Every image of a shrinking rainforest, every glimmer of a methane plume, relies on a cascade of computational power, housed in structures that hum day and night. It’s a reminder that even the tools of salvation have their price.
There are also considerations about tagging animals for tracking, which raises questions about their wellbeing, while financial and technical hurdles could potentially limit the use of advanced space tech in conservation for countries with fewer resources.
Critics have also pointed to the growing problem of space debris – the clutter of spent rocket stages and defunct satellites that are increasingly spiralling through the void. These relics of technological prowess threaten to collide with operational satellites, jeopardising the very systems we depend on.
A new hope for satellites?
But to dismiss these innovations outright would be to deny their potential. The industry is evolving, with companies designing smaller, more efficient satellites and adopting strategies to manage orbital traffic.
Satellites are becoming cheaper and smarter, with AI unlocking faster, deeper insights. As Amy Rosenthal of Planet Labs notes, “As the pace of change increases, better monitoring and understanding of our changing ecosystems are crucial. There’s a significant role for satellites to track these changes, develop solutions to stem further biodiversity loss and support restoration efforts.”
Initiatives such as Planet Labs’ Project Centinela provide high-resolution imagery of biodiversity hotspots, helping conservationists prioritise efforts in the most critical areas. “We now have the increased capabilities and responsibility to make planetary changes visible, accessible and actionable,” adds Rosenthal.
Rod Downie, interim director of science at WWF-UK, also explains how satellite-led insights are engaging the public on conservation. In the Arctic, Downie and his team are developing a better understanding of where walruses haul-out on land in the context of rapid warming and declining sea ice. The Walrus from Space citizen science project encourages volunteers to survey walrus populations using satellite imagery, which contributes to research on the effects of climate change.
‘Walrus detectives’ search for, and count, walruses in thousands of satellite images collected by space technology. The benefit of this approach is that it’s non-invasive and does not disturb the animals. Besides, few volunteers, no matter how willing, would be able to get themselves to the remote reaches of the Arctic.
Satellites have become indispensable allies in the fight to save Earth’s biodiversity, humming with purpose in the infinite quiet of space. Yet, as Rosenthal says, space technology is just the tool – it is our responsibility to act. Satellites offer us a view and, with it, a choice: to save what is irreplaceable or to look away. As the godwit flies and the tiger prowls, the question is whether we, their stewards, will rise to the occasion.
Main image: a controlled fire in the Australian outback shot from a drone/Credit: Getty
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