The Canid Camera project at SUNY-ESF will allow scientists to help researchers identify wildlife through trail cameras in the Hudson Valley.

“Canid” refers to mammals in the dog family, such as foxes and wolves. Amanda Cheeseman, a postdoctoral associate at SUNY-ESF and her team, recently installed camera traps throughout the Hudson Valley to snap photos of wildlife.

With those photos, the team determined the areas wildlife were using or avoiding to improve forest management practices, according to a SUNY-ESF press release.

Cheeseman is currently studying the declining populations of the New England cottontail rabbit, along with a team of undergraduates.

Her team will also study predator species such as wolves, coyotes and foxes. They’ll research whether different forest management techniques lead to different predator activities, in turn determining if that impacts the survival of the New England cottontail, per the press release.

Restricted to the dense groundcover of young forests, the New England cottontail is at risk of disappearing as its habitat declines. The trail cameras allow researchers to look at the wildlife diversity within “young and old forests,” Cheeseman said.

Cheeseman had a team of undergraduates to help her with the project, according to the press release. There were more than 100,000 images collected by cameras in the three years since they were set up. Cheeseman said she needed help going through them.

The team of undergraduates included Allison Becker, Reilly Carlson, Melissa Phillips and Jenna Holakovsky, per the press release. All these students are currently studying in the department of environmental and forest biology at SUNY-ESF.

Already having experience working in a lab that focused on the piping plover, an endangered bird, Carlson said she was looking for more research experience related to mammals.

The team had to find ways to work around unusual obstacles. Each trail camera was equipped with bait to attract wildlife, but “sometimes the bears come and just take it because they can rip it off the tree,” Carlson said.

Cheeseman said her team of undergrads were “fantastic,” and that “the project wouldn’t have been possible without them.”

The students will continue to tag wildlife photos, manage social media for the project and create other support materials to engage the public, according to the press release.

Cheeseman chose to use Zooniverse, a citizen science project database, to help with the identification process. Zooniverse is the “world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research,” according to the database’s website.

Cheeseman added that the team is working on outreach to engage more people because “the public should see what is in these forests.”

Published on February 18, 2018 at 9:58 pm