Over the past few weeks, I’ve stepped into a completely new space in my professional journey: training towards becoming a licensed drone pilot. What started as a simple nudge from Dr Toucher has quickly become a challenging, exciting, and surprisingly humbling learning experience.

I’ve always been fascinated by landscapes, how they change, how people interact with them, and how ecosystems respond over time. Drones offer a perspective I had never fully engaged with before: the ability to see patterns, connections, and impacts from above. For someone working at the intersection of people, environment, and place, this felt like a natural next step.

The licensing process itself has been far more involved than I initially expected. Beyond learning to fly, I’ve been immersed in aviation law, airspace regulations, meteorology, safety planning, and risk management. It’s given me a new respect for the discipline and responsibility that comes with operating in shared airspace, especially when working in sensitive ecological areas and near communities.

What excites me most is how this skill can strengthen environmental research and observation work. Drones have the potential to support wetland mapping, land-use monitoring, and long-term environmental observation, while also creating powerful visual tools for storytelling and engagement. I’m particularly interested in how aerial data can complement ground-based research and help bridge scientific knowledge with community experience.

This journey has reminded me that learning doesn’t always mean staying within familiar boundaries. Sometimes it means looking at the same landscapes we know so well, but from an entirely new angle. As I have completed my license, I’m excited about the possibilities this technology brings and how it can contribute meaningfully to SAEON’s work of understanding and sustaining South Africa’s changing environment.