After just over a year of fundraising, negotiating, and partnership alignments we have the new drone in hand!

This was made possible by multiple donors, and businesses. Special ‘Thanks!’ to Booze Brothers, and Wilson Creek Winery for hosting the two fundraisers that raised the primary funds to purchase the drone.

A drone is a pricey investment but it is an invaluable tool in the field of wildlife protection. This drone will fly daily research routes, to study the distribution of predator to prey ratios, and help rangers keep an eye on these elusive mountain cats.

Due to the conditions of the snow leopard habitat this drone will allow rangers to reach the snow leopard habitat within minutes, instead of hours, or even days. Stay tuned for more updates on our snow leopard drone protection and research project in partnership with The Snow Leopard Conservancy and The Rocky Mountain Cat Conservancy.

The next steps include flight testing stateside in areas with high wind and mountainous terrain. After the basic parameters are established and set up with those flights we will be doing test flights with a FLIR camera, sponsored on loan to us by FLIR.