Nature’s Fanny Pack: Camera Trapping - Environment for the Americas

14 Sep Nature’s Fanny Pack: Camera Trapping

WHAT PROWLS

The time has come again for more camera setups and looking at images they have captured the last 3 months! Our Rancho Project takes place in the southern most part of GOGA where as the name states in Spanish, part of it has farm land! This makes it fascinating knowing how close wildlife can be around spaces people have been in, especially seeing pumas walk by cameras set out within a matter of days! These cameras are mainly on trails used by hikers and can be used to make calculations on rates they are used by people. Along these trails animals like bobcats, pumas, and skunks are seen roaming around at night and early morning!

tHE TERRAIN TO OUR CAMERAS

The deployment of our cameras can be a mix of off and on trail with varying terrain! With our projects in both Muir Woods and Rancho the terrain can vary in the length we drive up to reach cameras or some can be a small walk to get to. During our pick up in the month of June everything was overgrown making it a bit longer to do camera maintenance as we had blackberry bushes tangling in our hair or tripping us left and right! The ground in some of the trails is very narrow and steep, most likely used by bikers only, at times these trails had us run down so as to not slip.

The weather at our Rancho sites can depend on the time of day! When we do camera maintenance the weather tends to be foggy, my hair was dripping minutes stepping out of the car for our June cameras. This is my favorite weather, the misty fog as it provides cool breezes and makes all the plants so vivid with water droplets. The downside to fog is that you do not get to see the height that you are at on these mountains as you can barely make out ten feet in front of you.