Wildlife Cameras Protocol
Purpose
Remote sensing wildlife cameras provide information about wildlife use of shoreline environments including species richness, behavior, and frequency of use. This protocol is for analysis of wildlife not humans (people require special permissions and permits). Collecting data with a wildlife camera allows for information to be collected at hours of the night and early morning where humans are not usually on-site, adding a richer understanding of actual animal use of these shoreline sites. Observations identify species and number for a certain timespan (called a trapset). Notes can also be taken on behaviors (foraging, moving through, resting, interactions between species, etc.).
Cameras are usually set for 48-96 hours at a time. Longer lengths may fill SD cards especially in high wave action areas. Photos can be manually categorized but this is not recommended as it can take some time. A better alternative is to use a program like Wildlife Insights to categorize the photos by species, remove blanks, and blur human faces. After the raw photos are processed, a total number of animal observations are available by species. Species richness can be tallied and then total number of detections can be divided by the trap hours for standardization across sites.
Photo processing
To upload to wildlife insights follow the instructions at this link.
When choosing the project to upload to choose: Shorecam.
Click on new deployment and add: Name of site, Treatment, Start date.
Example: Lost Lake Restoration 8/25/2025.
ID tag
It is important to have an identification tag with each camera so that passersby
know that it is a research camera (rather than a security camera).
Suggestions for what to include on the laminated field tag include: logo of
organization, camera number.
Purpose wording example: This camera is for wildlife research
purposes. For any questions, contact: email and/or phone.