Audubon Wins at the 2023 Anthem Awards

The National Audubon Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofits, with a global mission to conserve our natural and ecological heritage. Working steadfastly with hundreds of partners and data holders, Audubon acquired a wealth of bird location data, including migration paths, place-to-place connections, and info on conservation challenges.

Postlight partnered with Audubon to bring the Bird Migration Explorer to reality. Born from an idea to showcase bird tracking data, migration data, and spatial data in a beautiful, impressively designed web application, the Explorer was a two-year project that brought together Postlight, the National Audubon Society, and GIS data partner Blue Raster. 

The Bird Migration Explorer includes:

• Interactive, animated maps of the full annual migration for 458 species
• More than 4.2 million point-to-point migratory bird connections across the hemisphere
• Visualizations for 19 selected Conservation Challenges that migratory birds are exposed to throughout the year across the Americas.

We’re proud to announce the platform is now a multi-award-winning digital experience!

Award-winning details

The Bird Migration Explorer has been recognized with three Anthem Awards in Sustainability, Environment, and Climate. Here’s what Audubon took home:

Digital & Innovative Experiences

Award: Silver

Sustainability, Environment & Climate
Digital & Innovative Experiences
Awareness & Media Categories (Nonprofit)

Digital or other innovative experiences created by or for an organization in an effort to raise awareness for Sustainability, Environment, and Climate Causes. Projects can include website experiences, games, virtual reality, augmented reality, extended and mixed reality, metaverse projects, IRL activations, etc.

Partnership or Collaboration

Award: Silver 

Sustainability, Environment & Climate
Partnership or Collaboration
Awareness & Media Categories (Nonprofit)

A partnership or collaboration between or two or more organizations, individuals, or entities to raise awareness for a Sustainability, Environment, and Climate cause. Programs can include events, products, performances, a film or video series, or a fundraising campaign.

People have always been curious and amazed by migratory birds and their incredible journeys, but only recently are scientists piecing together the full picture of how these birds travel from one end of the globe to the other.

Dr. Jill Deppe, Senior Director, Migratory Bird Initiative

About the Bird Migration Explorer

The Bird Migration Explorer brings together three types of geospatial bird data:

• Abundance data from Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird Status model
• Connectivity data from the USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center Bird Banding Lab and Bird Genoscape Project
• Tracking data from Birds Canada, the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, and hundreds of researchers from across the globe, who generously contributed their datasets to this project

Audubon scientists and cartographers consolidated these data to create animated and interactive visualizations to bring species migration to life on a map. The Bird Migration Explorer reflects an extraordinary partnership among science, conservation, and technology organizations and institutions around the world.  

We’re in a golden age of bird migration research and technology, and by consolidating all of these data into one interactive platform, we can better understand which places can have the biggest impact to help migratory birds.

Melanie Smith, Program Director, Bird Migration Explorer

About Blue Raster

From Blue Raster: 

“Since 2002, Blue Raster has partnered at the senior level with leading global organizations, helping them share their unique stories through the powerful visual medium of interactive maps. We make organizational visions a reality, and in our success, we strive to push further — moving beyond dots on a map.”

Learn more about Blue Raster here.

Nathan Henry (he/him) is Director, Head of Product Management at Postlight. Reach out at hello@postlight.com.