John Fieberg co-leads NASA project visualizing wildlife movement in vital corridors
May 5, 2026
How do animals navigate a changing world?
From the hundreds of thousands of caribou migrating across northern Canada to a single grizzly bear attempting to cross a Montana highway 46 times, wildlife movement is a constant search for resources.
Researchers in the Yellowstone-to-Yukon region (Y2Y) of western North America combine high-resolution animal tracking with NASA remote sensing data. CFANS professor John Fieberg (Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology) co-leads a NASA-funded effort to visualize tracking data on wildlife movement across the Y2Y region, to protect vital corridors at the scale nature truly requires.
The Room2Roam team with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative is turning complex satellite and tag data into near-real-time visualizations. This allows conservationists to:
- Identify exact "hotspots" where elk and caribou cross dangerous highways.
- Sync animal movements with real-time weather and land-use data.
- Provide managers with automated tools to make faster, better-informed protection decisions.
Check out the full animation below to see the "epic movements" for yourself!
