Camera Monitoring Pilot
A pilot montoring project to gather data on fauna presence/absence on private property across the Central Coast
Capacity building - LEP23_015_LLC_4
The issue
The CEN would like to have more data on the presence of fauna species across the Central Coast. Having this data could help with planning projects, and also with our advocacy campaigns and submissons. While vegetation mapping, such as with the SEED database, allows us to have a fairly accurate assessment of vegetation communities on private properties, estimating what is living in those vegetation communities is often less so.
The solution
We started a pilot project to develop and test a wildlife camera monitoring program that could be run by volunteers and work with private landholders across the Central Coast. This pilot researched camera monitoring protocols and put together a standardised method for motion detection, including guides, that volunteers could follow, and then selected some sites to test this method. Over the course of the pilot, another protocol was added to the methods to support CEN's Platypus Watch project with camera monitoring to detect platypus. This required that the cameras be switched from motion detection to time lapse photography for best results.
The impact
Overall, the pilot project was very successful, both in capturing good data on fauna presence, and in showing the limitations of the cameras we used along with common issues we might encounter in the monitoring program. The guides and camera protocols have been updated with the lessons learned and we have also identified ways to expand and improve on the monitoring in the future, including the addition of acoustic monitoring, and the possibility of mapping the records on GIS software to aid in analysis. Our next step is to start expanding this monitoring to private properties across the Central Coast.
Key facts
- Pilot project using wildlife cameras for presence detection of fauna species on the private properties on the Central Coast
- Platypus added as a target species for detection and time lapse method used to successfully detect platypus on some sites