Conservation runs on spatial data. How ASU is helping the workforce keep up.

A 4x4 safari and field research vehicle drives along a muddy dirt track through a vast, green African savanna under a bright blue sky with scattered clouds. A prominent acacia tree stands to the left, and the open grassland extends to the horizon, illustrating the remote and expansive natural environments where conservationists conduct wildlife tracking and GIS habitat mapping.

The maps that drive conservation decisions are only as sound as the judgment behind them. ASU’s Conservation Futures Academy is building the workforce to produce analysis that holds up.

Across conservation, decisions that once rested on field experience now lean on geospatial analysis. A habitat suitability map can determine which parcel a land trust pursues, which boundary an agency defends and which proposal a funder backs. As the tools have spread across the field, the weight riding on each map has grown with them.

The capability to build those maps well has not spread as evenly as the software. Producing a map is one skill. Producing analysis that holds up, that names its assumptions, tests its uncertainty and translates into a recommendation a stakeholder can defend, is another. That second skill is where the field’s need is widening, and where most training stops.

A workforce question, not a software one

This is the gap ASU set out to close. The Rob Walton School of Conservation Futures, established in 2025 through a $115 million gift from the Rob Walton Foundation, the largest in the university’s history, pairs conservation science with workforce development as a single mission. Conservation Futures Academy, the school’s professional learning arm, turns that mission into courses practitioners can take mid-career, without stepping away from the work.

The approach is global by design. The Academy’s instructors come from ASU, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the National Parks Conservation Association and the community-led Chepkitale Indigenous People Development Project in Mount Elgon, Kenya, where Ogiek mappers document their own lands to advance their land rights. The programs run from career discovery through executive strategy, opening conservation careers to learners at every stage. That breadth is the point: the field needs capability at scale, across borders and across career levels, not a single credential for a single role.

Where the practice gets specific

The Academy’s new course makes the gap concrete. Applied GIS and Habitat Mapping for Conservation walks practitioners through a full habitat suitability project, from framing the question through the decision-ready brief that has to stand up when a funder or a regulator asks how the map was built. It treats judgment, choosing scale, justifying assumptions, handling uncertainty, as a teachable skill rather than something picked up by accident.

For a step-by-step look at how to build a habitat suitability model that holds up, read the breakdown on the Conservation Futures Academy newsroom.