Utah Division of Wildlife Resources: Improving wildlife management with cloud data storage
About Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources serves the people of Utah by managing, sustaining and enhancing the state's wildlife populations, conserving wildlife habitats, and regulating hunting and fishing.
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Decentralizing UT DWR’s data warehouse with BigQuery allowed them to easily search through 20 years of wildlife data to make more informed conservation and management decisions.
Google Cloud results
- Gained access to over 20 years of their animal behavioral data with a single query by implementing a reliable, serverless data warehouse
- Reduced time spent manually tracking animals from half a day to an instant GPS search
- Can get real-time location on over 3,000 animals with tracking collars without leaving the office
Cut days of animal tracking work with live GPS data
Challenge: Decades of data with no direction
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) aims to protect biodiversity and pass along our wildlife heritage to future generations. Many of its conservation decisions come from data gathered about local wildlife, including migration patterns, agriculture, and birth and mortality rates.
DWR's history of animal tracking data went back over 20 years, but its on-premise data warehouse was dated. With the amount of data growing rapidly, querying the dataset was nearly impossible and failed regularly. The division's team of scientists wasn't able to realize the true potential of what the data was telling. They knew they had data on more than 20,000 different animals, but they couldn't access it easily to make the best possible data-driven conversation decisions.
Solution: Tracking—and instantly accessing—valuable data with BigQuery
To improve access to valuable animal-related data, DWR replaced its on-premise data warehouse with a fully serverless data warehouse with Google Cloud. With BigQuery, a completely serverless, enterprise data warehouse solution, DWR can quickly search its database of historical data to identify animal behavioral patterns. A cloud-based solution also makes its data warehouse infinitely scalable without having to worry about hardware upgrades as its dataset continues to grow at pace.
This change, along with new data gathered from GPS-equipped tracking collars, means that the DWR team can gain new insights into animals in the state. It used to take the team up to half a day to locate a specific animal. Now, researchers gather location data from tracking collars multiple times an hour, giving them visibility into more than 42 million animal location data points. With quick access to consolidated tracking data, they can better understand animal movement and behaviors, and identify barriers to safe wildlife migration.
"The storage capacity was incredible, and it allowed us to expand our dataset without worrying about running out of space."
—Blair Stringham, Utah Wildlife Migration Initiative CoordinatorResults: Making more educated conservation decisions, faster
Integrating BigQuery into DWR's new Wildlife Tracker application for wildlife management and population tracking has given the team access to more data and better insights than they thought possible. "We've been able to accomplish more than anyone ever dreamed. Google Cloud has allowed us to build a work process that makes Utah the envy of the West," said Utah Wildlife Migration Initiative Coordinator Blair Stringham.
They’ve been able to use the data to understand population management needs and reference those data points to:
- Determine how to distribute hunting and fishing licenses
- Identify areas where migration routes cross roadways so they construct crossing structures and fences to help wildlife and fish migrate safely
- Track bighorn sheep herds using geofencing technology to reduce the risk of potential pathogen transmission
- Determine the age of fish to assess the overall health of a fishery
- Track sandhill cranes migration patterns in real time to identify important habitats for preservation or rehabilitation and protect critical roosting and stopover locations
And these use cases are just the beginning. As datasets grow, DWR is also finding newer and more innovative ways to apply data in the field.
"We've been able to accomplish more than anyone ever dreamed. Google Cloud has allowed us to build work processes that make Utah's wildlife agency the envy of the West."
—Blair Stringham, Utah Wildlife Migration Initiative CoordinatorSetting the standard for supporting state wildlife
One of the team's newest uses has included using the app to learn how animals are dying. Post-mortem investigations are time-sensitive: on DWR's previous system, animals would be scavenged before they could be investigated. With real-time data, scientists can assess the cause of death and make decisions about habitat improvements—like whether or not predators are an issue in an area—to protect sensitive species, such as the native cutthroat trout.
Its new Wildlife Tracker app far exceeded its own staff's expectations by giving them instant access to millions of data points, allowing them to compare multiple datasets at once, and creating an easy-to-use collaborative tool for non-expert partners to use. This app has set the standard for other states' tracking of wildlife information.
"The cloud technology we use for Wildlife Tracker has opened the door to new and scalable applications and notification systems to better understand our wildlife tracking data. And our alert system has great potential to mitigate human-wildlife conflicts to protect our wildlife," said GIS Specialist Jessie Shapiro.
DWR's pioneering work is leading to new data-driven approaches to improve conservation and extending its mission to help sustain, enhance, and conserve wildlife nationwide for generations to come.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources serves the people of Utah by managing, sustaining and enhancing the state's wildlife populations, conserving wildlife habitats, and regulating hunting and fishing.
About SpringML
SpringML specializes in improving service outcomes by helping government connect and activate their data with modern, digital solutions.