[11-21-07 – Satellite News] The GeoEye Foundation has donated nine high-quality satellite images to wildlife conservation groups including the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, to aid in gorilla preservation efforts.
    The Foundation, a not-for-profit arm of GeoEye Inc., provides imagery from the Ikonos satellite, which can collect images with a ground resolution of 1 meter, to universities and non-profits in order to advance research in geographic information systems (GIS) and environmental studies.
    GeoEye reseller Satellite Imaging Corp. requested the data from the Foundation on behalf of the Dian Fossey Fund, the Central African Regional Program for the Environment, International Gorilla Conservation Program, Zoological Society of London and the African Conservation Fund.
    “The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International is one of the main groups who are looking after this region and the Virunga national parks,” Leo Romeijn, president of Satellite Imaging Corp., said. “With the gorilla killings going on and the political disturbances in the area, we thought it would be a good thing to see if we can help these people.”
    The nine data strips donated to the wildlife funds cover 1,000 square kilometers of area of the Virunga National Park, which is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa and is home to about 60 percent of the world’s gorilla population. The data spans six years. The first satellite image was taken in May 2001.
    "This kind and quality of information will be enormously useful in helping to plan for the future of the endangered mountain gorillas," said Clare Richardson, president and CEO of the Fossey Fund, said in a statement. "It will also allow all of us to continue our work with local partners in the region to help create far-reaching sustainable conservation solutions in the Virungas."
    The GeoEye Foundation was established in March to help provide imagery from the company’s archive of 300 million square kilometers for use in the academic and research environments, said GeoEye spokesman Mark Brender. The Foundation has provided grants to about 30 institutions to date for research projects such as an urban development study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and glacier studies at the University of Alaska.
    “We want to help grow the new generation of users of geospatial technology to meet local, national and global challenges,” Brender said. “We set up the Foundation partly because it’s our corporate responsibility to act as a good citizen, partly because it positioned us competitively in the geospatial environment and further establishes us as an industry leader in the world of aerial and satellite imagery, and in part because of recruiting and employee morale.”
    A Foundation Employee Advisory Committee reviews imagery requests and decides whether or not to grant them. GeoEye has turned down “a handful” of requests — mostly because the imagery does not exist in the archive or because of the difficulty in collecting images from that region, said Brender.
    GeoEye’s next-generation satellite, GeoEye-1, developed under the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s NextView program and manufactured by General Dynamics/Advanced Information Systems, will be able to collect images with a ground resolution of less than half meter. The satellite is scheduled to be launched in the late first quarter or early second quarter of 2008 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.