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Fall 2023

Newsletter Archive

 

Sneak Peak: Calgary Connect camera-trap analysis

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Miistakis has been working on analyzing five years' worth of camera-trap data in Calgary. Follow along as we learn more about our urban wildlife!

With the help of volunteers classifying millions of images to species, we now have over 339k records of wildlife and human events in parks and ecological corridors in Calgary! Our goal with the data is to better understand urban biodiversity in Calgary including how high human presence impacts wildlife, validate the use of modeled ecological corridors, and better understand the effectiveness of wildlife-road mitigation such as the Calgary SW Ring Road bridge span over the Elbow River. Check out the below activity maps of where deer (mule deer and white-tailed deer), moose, coyote, black bear, bobcat and raccoon were most active in the areas we monitored with camera-traps. The bigger the dot the more observations; a red dot indicates a camera-trap that did not detect the species. What do you think - does it surprise you? What do you notice about where each species is found? Stay tuned for a full report in the coming weeks!

Our urban wildlife monitoring program, Calgary Captured, was launched in 2017 with project partners. The project has led to the only systematically collected dataset of wildlife in the city, and has grown into a larger regional project, called Calgary Connect, with the goal of developing a regional ecological network for the Calgary metropolitan region. The camera-trap data will inform this larger work by continuing to build information on species presence and wildlife movement in the region.

Thank you to our project partners City of Calgary, Alberta Forestry and Parks, Friends of Fish Creek Provincial Park Society and Weaselhead/Glenmore Park Preservation Society; and our generous project funders TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, the Calgary Foundation and Enbridge.