A monumental effort is underway in Florida to sift through millions of wildlife photos captured by trail cameras across the southern US state, in a bid to help conservationists manage and protect native ecosystems.
Launched on May 26, the Florida Wildlife Watch is a “citizen science” project organized by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). It is encouraging the public to help biologists identify and classify animals snapped on trail cameras across six million acres of Wildlife Management Areas.
“Florida Wildlife Watch connects people at home to nature while having a real impact on conservation,” said Graysen Boehning, FWC statewide participatory science coordinator.
“Even just a few classifications can be incredibly important in helping us understand the incredible ecosystems and wildlife we have here in Florida.”
Animals captured by the trail cams include great blue herons, red-shouldered hawks, gopher tortoises and Florida panthers. To date, 1,009 volunteers have made 229,021 classifications, with over 83,000 of these completed on the second day of the project alone.
The project administrators said participants “flew through” the first lot of images, thanking them for their “amazing work”. The FWC hasn’t stated how many images in total need sorting, but has previously said that its trail cams capture “millions of wildlife images every year.”
Scientists actively began placing trail cams across Florida in spring 2024 for the Everglades Wildlife Watch, a project that focused heavily on monitoring South Florida's unique ecosystems.
While the previous project covered a 1.6 million-acre zone, this latest research covers the entire area under the FWC’s custodianship statewide.
Anyone can take part in the project and view the trail cam images by clicking the “Classify” button in the project hub, which is hosted on the Zooniverse website – a platform developed by the universities of Oxford and Minnesota housing several “people-powered” research initiatives.
There’s no formal end date and the project will wrap up once all images have been sorted.
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