ASC collects a lot of video which won’t ever be edited or published.
For projects like Landmark and our Olympic National Forest Pine Marten Survey, we work with a diligent team of videographers. They stay immobile, day and night, recording at the slightest hint of movement.
Our team receives little recognition and no credit when their film is actually watched. They don’t mind, though—they aren’t human.
The last decade has seen an increase in the use of automated camera traps in ecology and conservation biology. Camera traps are motion-activated, either firing off photos or recording a certain length of video when movement enters their frame. Sometimes they’re set off by nothing but wind rustling through the grass; other times it’s an entire herd of bison.
ASC crews regularly check camera traps and sort through what sometimes amounts to hours of video. Of the hundreds of one-minute videos we’ve collected, here are some of our favorite moments, in no particular order.
2. Camera trap bait in the Olympic National Forest frustrated this bobcat for a whole ten hours…
3. …it wasn’t any easier for the coyotes.
4. The prairie isn’t always all fun and games—only sometimes.
5. Elk will lick rocks for salt and occasionally find creative alternatives.
6. Sometimes we see just a snippet, a hint that wildlife is out there which we haven’t seen before…
7. …or hard-to-see wildlife which we know is there.
8. Landmark crews use camera traps to monitor fence interactions. For some wildlife, the fences aren’t a big deal.
9. For some, it takes a bit of strategizing to make the crossing.
10. And some mysteriously make their way across.
Of course, we can’t ignore some of the wildest creatures that our camera traps capture: ASC volunteers.