OOS 11-5 - A partnership to support wildlife management and conservation in the Yellowstone-to-Yukon migration corridor

Background/Question/Methods
The Yellowstone to Yukon migration corridor (Y2Y) extends over 1.3 million km², spanning 3,400 km across the Rocky Mountains of western North America from Wyoming, United States to northern Yukon, Canada. The region has a strong network of hundreds of partner groups that coordinate conservation across the Y2Y region. We are working with wildlife biologists in the region to build a collection of animal tracking data and design analysis tools to support local and regional wildlife management, conservation and decision-making. Partners will archive animal tracking data on Movebank, a global bio-logging database, and we will develop tools using MoveApps, a no-code analysis platform for animal tracking data that allows users to build and share workflows composed of customizable modules or “Apps”. Through interactive discussions and hands-on sessions with project partners, we will define data analysis needs, design and test tools, and collect feedback through training sessions.

Results/Conclusions
Our project launched in fall 2021, with seven government and non-profit partners from the Y2Y region working with our development team. The growing Y2Y tracking data archive supports public and controlled-access sharing, allowing the public to discover research and monitoring efforts in the region. Over 45 Apps on the beta MoveApps platform allow those with data access to process and analyze data from the archive. Through discussions with our partners, we identified a wide range of needs for data preparation, visualization, analysis and reporting, from which we chose three areas of focus for our first phase of App development: (1) map-based visualizations of animal movement data for exploration and outreach to the public and decision makers; (2) clustering behaviors, in particular, identifying ungulate parturitions; and (3) road ecology, including successful road crossings, vehicle collisions and time spent near roads. To support these new tools, we have expanded MoveApps functionality to integrate external environmental and geospatial information, including global roads and protected areas, global weather and remote sensing data products, and local resources. Through continued training and outreach, we will build capacity for joint analysis and networking across the region, and to migration corridors globally.