Using animal-tracking data for dynamic spatial planning: a collaborative global initiative

Effective biodiversity conservation requires innovative spatial planning strategies for unprotected areas. A major obstacle to promoting sustainable human–wildlife coexistence is our limited understanding of how animal movement is affected by habitat fragmentation, barriers like roads, fences, settlements and infrastructure, and human disturbance. This information is essential for ensuring good functional connectivity in human-modified landscapes, yet is rarely available to spatial planners, who instead must resort to using coarse proxies or simulated data. Cutting-edge animal-tracking technology is the method of choice for filling this knowledge gap. Miniature wildlife ‘wearables’ can be used to record high-resolution movement trajectories (GPS) and estimate activity budgets (accelerometer) for wild animals, revealing the specific environmental conditions that cause species to either thrive or struggle. Now is the time to strategically deploy this proven methodology at scale, to learn how best to share space with wildlife. A new initiative by the National Geographic Society is building a global network of field teams to track a wide range of terrestrial mammals and birds across gradients of land modification worldwide. Each field team will investigate their chosen study species in a matched pair of high- and low-disturbance sites (e.g., urban/rural; unprotected/protected), yielding contrasts for aggregated downstream analyses across taxonomic groups, regions, and environmental contexts. This unprecedented collaborative effort will significantly advance our understanding of the behaviour and ecological needs of wildlife in human-modified landscapes, enabling innovative, context-appropriate and scalable approaches to spatial planning. Specifically, by integrating dynamic wildlife movement data into their decision-support systems, spatial planners will be able to determine acceptable degrees of habitat fragmentation, maximise functional connectivity, create effective wildlife corridors, bridges and refugia, reduce the barrier-function of road networks and other infrastructure, and minimise disturbance by aligning the mobility needs of humans and wildlife. This work will not only benefit wildlife, but it will also strengthen ecosystem integrity, health and resilience more generally, realising nature’s full potential to contribute to a good quality of life for people.