Harnessing the power of satellites for conservation! Thanks to a team from NASA DEVELOP National Program, we have a better understanding of sites that might serve as suitable Venus flytrap habitats and how those sites are forecasted to change over the next 30 years.
Venus flytraps are native to only a roughly 90-mile inland radius around Wilmington, NC, but the majority of their natural habitat has been drained, developed, or otherwise destroyed.
The NASA DEVELOP team, in partnership with the North Carolina Botanical Garden and North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, used remote sensing data and population records to produce maps that predict where in the flytraps’ historical range they might continue to grow best – and what sites in that range are most at risk for development. These results can inform our conservation team’s seed-banking and reintroduction efforts and help prioritize new sites for protection.