eMammal Opportunity in Raleigh Area

What animals are using your woods or backyard?  How does your site compares to others?

If you live in Raleigh, Durham or Chapel Hill join eMammal to run a camera trap and find out!

We are starting a new citizen science camera trap project that helps you manage camera trap pictures, share the data, put your results in perspective that can address larger scientific and conservation questions about where animals live.  We want you to help us understand how animal communities change from urban to suburban to rural and wild areas, and what human factors affect that.  Our early research revealed some interesting results about the effect of chicken coops, dogs, and fences, but we need to expand this work to bring in more factors.  Are habitat corridors important?  If you live next to Umstead State Park will you have more animals? Where are the coyotes hanging out and why? (We only got 2 coyotes in our earlier Raleigh work).

The eMammal project has already worked with hundreds of volunteers to survey 29 parks from South Carolina to Maryland, but this will be a new venture into urban ecology with the opportunity for you be our beta testers.  We hope to expand this research to other cities in the future to see if the things we learn about Raleigh, Durham or Chapel Hill are repeatable across the United States.

Here’s a summary of how it will work:

1)    You get a camera trap (limited to Reconyx and Bushnell models now, contact us about using other models)

2)    You pick a spot you want to monitor and fill out this form.

3)    You receive an invitation from us to officially participate in the project.

4)    You complete the online training course.

5)    You go to your site and strap the camera to a tree.

6)    You come back 2-3 weeks later to retrieve the memory card.  You may then move the camera to a new tree for another 2 weeks (or leave the camera at its current location, but we prefer more locations even if they are close together).

7)    You use our eMammal software (downloaded from the website) on your computer to identify the species in each picture.

8)    You upload the pictures to us using the eMammal software.  We review each one to confirm the species identification, and then archive them in our database.

9)    In the near future we will have these results available for you to review and compare to other locations at the new eMammal website (www.emammal.org – still under construction)

If you are interested in volunteering please fill in the form and we will contact you soon!