Seeing The Forest Through Juan’s Eyes

Juan stops briefly to gaze across the misty valley below, then the tall grass crunches under his paws as he lumbers on his way. It’s nothing out of the ordinary for Juan as he roams Machu Picchu’s mountains and cloud forests. However, these are all extraordinary moments for SBC.

Video footage from SBC’s first camera-equipped GPS collars will reveal important insights into the lives of Juan and other bears at risk. With deforestation and human-wildlife conflict escalating, technology, such as GPS collars, plays a vital role in identifying timely conservation actions that protect threatened spectacled bear populations.

SBC fitted four bears with GPS camera collars in 2025. The cameras capture 10-15 seconds of video footage every ten minutes for about four months until the collars disengage. See Machu Picchu from Juan’s point of view in the video below.

GPS Collar Technology Powers Spectacled Bear Conservation

SBC’s GPS collaring program began in May 2024. Since then, in partnership with SERNANP, Peru’s protected area authority, we have continued fitting collars on bears in the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary and the Laquipampa Wildlife Refuge. GPS collars track real-time bear movements and habitat use. This data helps strengthen the management of protected areas and their buffer zones. It also strategically focuses our conservation efforts. Importantly, our findings to date indicate bears spend 60% of their time outside of park boundaries in vulnerable, unprotected habitats.

But why do spectacled bears use certain areas?

To help answer this urgent question across the large landscapes bears depend on, we added camera capability to our GPS collars. The cameras give us a new dimension of data: bear behavior. This technology, combined with SBC’s research and bear expertise, transforms our ability to understand and protect critical bear habitat.

Understanding Bear Behavior

The video footage provides immediate insights into bear life. For example, we can see the types of fruits they eat and witness their interactions with other individuals. But there is another important use for the footage.

GPS collars track bear movements and activity levels throughout the day. Now, by correlating these patterns with the behaviors confirmed in the video footage, we can extrapolate the activities bears engage in throughout the year. We will understand not only where they move, but how they spend their lives inside and outside of protected areas.

With this information SBC can more rapidly identify the key resources for bears that we must safeguard (such as feeding areas, denning sites, and water sources). This in turn supports the conservation actions we must take in partnership with Peru’s government and local villages.

This is why technology like camera-equipped GPS collars are an important advance in SBC’s race to protect spectacled bears like Juan. As we fit more bears with camera collars to deepen our understanding of their behavior, the footage of Juan’s forest treks, afternoon snacks and tree naps offers a window into his world that will help shape a brighter future for this vulnerable species.