Planet’s Project Centinela: Monitoring Vulnerable Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation Action

The name “Centinela” is storied in the tropical botany world. Surveyed by legendary botanist Al Gentry and others in the 1970s, the tiny Ecuadorian mountain range was discovered to harbor dozens of species new to science—roughly every third species they encountered. But in the years following this revelation, Centinela’s forests were decimated. For decades, botanists suspected that this treasure trove of unusual species had been lost forever. They even named one new orange-flowered species Gasteranthus extinctus, proclaiming its discovery in the same breath as its extinction.

Over the years, “Centinela” has come to stand for the sudden extinction of organisms inhabiting small, special ecosystems when that habitat is destroyed. And yet, in 2021, botanists from the Field Museum made a surprising, field-changing discovery. Gasteranthus extinctus survives in the tiny, remaining patches of cloud forest still clinging to Centinela’s ridgeline—along with the rest of Centinela’s remarkable flora.

Gasteranthus and Centinela Range offer us hope – and a lifeline – to halt species extinction before it’s too late. What this parable tells us is that even as we face the increasing fragmentation, degradation, and loss of habitats, the urgent and effective action we take today – protecting and investing in the most vulnerable, high-biodiversity places on the planet – can realistically prevent the disappearance of endemic and rare species that have made special places their home over generations. It can preserve the diversity of life that fires the imagination and feeds the soul of humanity.

Earth is having its Centinela moment. There is urgent need for effective, frequent, and accessible monitoring to ensure that these measures are applied in the places where extinctions are most likely to occur and irrecoverable biodiversity and natural capital are at greatest risk. Today, many of our most vulnerable and precious places receive limited global attention. More than 40% of Alliance for Zero Extinction sites are unprotected – the places where extinctions are most likely to occur. Many of the world’s 16,337 Key Biodiversity Areas go unmonitored for years–their status updated only once every half-decade. And about 1.22% of Earth’s landmass harbors concentrations of rare and threatened species in “species rarity sites” that remain vulnerable to destruction (Dinerstein et al. 2024). 

Introducing Project Centinela 

That is why Planet is launching Project Centinela – a new program to help leading scientists, conservationists, and stewards monitor and safeguard up to 50 of the world’s vulnerable biodiversity hotspots. Project Centinela will put an unprecedented array of high-resolution, high-frequency satellite imagery, analytics, and Planetary Variables into the hands of those who are maintaining a lifeline for biodiversity and the communities who depend on that variety of life. In many cases, these places will be in underinvested ecosystems where we know advances are needed in biodiversity understanding and in conservation outcomes. In the case of Centinela, a clear view of the last remaining fragments of cloud forest – at the resolution and pace that change is occurring – can put environmental groups, government agencies, researchers, and communities on a faster path to preserving them and advancing their recovery.

We consider Project Centinela one element of Planet’s contributions to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (known as the Biodiversity Plan) and an initiative that helps us fulfill our Public Benefit Corporation purpose: to accelerate humanity toward a more sustainable, secure, and prosperous world, by illuminating environmental and social change. We aim to engage an ecosystem of other partners to support these sites and conservation leaders.

We inaugurate this program with an initial set of eight sites, which exemplify up to 50 hotspots around the world Project Centinela will encompass over the next three years. 

Proposing Sites for Project Centinela

Conserving the globe’s most imperiled biodiversity and ecosystems happens only when we work together. We invite you to tell us where you believe it’s imperative to monitor and safeguard biodiversity, and how you’ll do it through collaboration between partners who hold the deep analytic expertise to hit the ground running with open Earth data and technologies and the boots-on-the-ground experience with local stewardship to turn knowledge into action. Sites are selected via an open application for eligible teams and sites. If interested in applying or staying informed about Project Centinela, please fill out our online form.

We look forward to supporting up to 50 of these partnerships in vulnerable biodiversity hotspots around the globe!