The reality of climate change combined with excess tourism or the overcrowding of visitors has led to the deterioration of some destinations' natural heritage, which require quick and effective environmental management. For this to take place, it is essential to have information available that can be used to identify the main challenges or problem areas for the development of sustainable initiatives.

For this reason, the islands of Mahé and La Digue have developed a cutting-edge initiative to manage their natural heritage through monitoring the territory via the use of drones. The geo-spacial information gathered by these devices provides 3D images with a high level of detail, identifying new areas that are environmentally at risk.

The project consists of several stages. Firstly, work teams are sent to vulnerable coastal areas on the islands, which use drones for a period of time to fly over and take high-resolution images of large areas of land, identifying which areas are in a critical environmental condition.

At the same time, agencies and governmental institutions are undergoing training on the processes, planning and use of the data obtained by the drones, with the objective of creating a collaborative open-data platform that provides information on the status of the environment and natural resources.

The introduction of drones as a tool to manage environmental resources provides added value to local administrators, allowing them to monitor and compile environmental information more efficiently.