Tracking wildlife and habitats with EU Space

Space-based technologies can reveal where habitats connect and how animals move through them. Combining Copernicus Earth observation with GNSS tracking can help protect corridors and support biodiversity conservation.

As European farmland becomes less diverse, the landscape features that connect habitats are under pressure. EU Space technologies are helping researchers map these corridors and understand how wildlife moves through them.

A hedge may look like a thin line on a satellite image, but to a bird, insect or small mammal it can be the bridge between habitats. However, across Europe, farms have merged into larger, more uniform parcels, leaving little room for the hedgerows, shrubs and woodland patches that once stitched the countryside together. Species that depend on these smaller features to move between larger areas of woodland or grassland now face narrower routes and longer distances between suitable habitats.

Satellite imagery can help. Copernicus Earth observation (EO) data can map land cover, monitor protected areas and track changes over time. This gives conservationists a view of habitats across vast areas.

A central tool in this effort is the World Heritage Hub, developed by EUSPA under the Copernicus programme. While heritage initiatives often focus on archaeology and monuments, the Hub also emphasises natural heritage. It brings together diverse spatial layers, including global protected areas from the Protected Planet database, UNESCO natural heritage sites (visualised as interactive green dots in its data viewer), and dedicated protected areas from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), such as Natura 2000 datasets.

The Hub bridges different ecological scales. Delivering open and free access, its goal is to empower decision-makers and researchers with the tools they need to track changes and assess risks. By bringing together information from different sources, including UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, protected areas and Copernicus datasets covering Natura 2000 sites, the Hub makes it easy to see how natural heritage areas relate to the wider landscape.

In cases where protected areas provide an important refuge for a species, the data is valuable to determine what lies beyond its boundaries.

From maps to movement

EUSPA supports the integration of this kind of evidence into tools that farmers can use directly. One example is BirdWatch, a Horizon Europe project supported by EUSPA. It combines EO data with species distribution models to give farmers recommendations on planting hedges and trees or introducing other agri-environmental measures best suited to local bird populations.

EO can show where potential corridors exist. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technologies, such as Galileo, add another perspective: how animals move through these landscapes. Lighter, more affordable GNSS tags now let researchers follow a wider range of species, including birds and smaller mammals, without disturbing their behaviour. Modern GNSS receivers can also improve positioning accuracy in challenging environments, such as dense forests.

By combining animal tracking with EO data, researchers can identify the routes animals use, see how these routes interact with habitat features and assess how changes in land use may affect them. For migratory species, this approach can reveal journeys that cross national borders and connect habitats hundreds or thousands of kilometres apart.

The combination of these data sources is also opening the door to more dynamic models of ecosystems. According to the EU Space Market Report 2026, emerging digital twin technologies are combining GNSS movement data with EO habitat data to create more detailed, dynamic representations of wildlife populations and their environments.

Connecting data for conservation

All this gives policymakers a way to check whether restoration efforts on paper are actually producing corridors animals use. This evidence can support Member States as they translate the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Nature Restoration Regulation into national plans.

By fostering the combined use of Copernicus and Galileo services, EUSPA helps convert space-based information into real-world solutions for conservation and sustainable ecosystem management.

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