Winter 2022

Newsletter Archive

What have we learned from Calgary Captured?

Calgary Captured is an urban wildlife monitoring program designed to document medium to large mammal spatial and temporal patterns in large urban parks. The project included setting up 97 cameras across 19 natural areas and three ecological corridors in Calgary. Over 5,000 people have contributed to helping Calgary Captured classify images - thank you Calgary!

We recently analysed a three-year Calgary Captured dataset:

• We documented a wide diversity of wildlife in our parks including white-tailed deer, mule deer, coyote, racoon, red fox, bobcat, skunk, and even moose, badger, bear, and cougar.
• Calgarians really love spending time in their parks - although cameras are set up off the beaten path - 75% of images were of people and pets.
• Wildlife adjust their behaviour and park use in response to the presence of people and pets:
  • Wildlife tends to be more active at night in parks with high daily numbers of people and pets.
  • In general, mule deer and coyote are well adapted to people and pets.
  • In general, bear, cougar and red fox activity in parks is almost exclusively to night partly in response to people and pets.
  • Cameras recorded approximately 20,000 images of off-leash dogs - 89% of these images were in on-leash dog areas.

Learn more about how we can better coexist with Calgary wildlife by reviewing our new graphic summary and species activity rate maps.

Special thanks to The Calgary Foundation, Alberta Ecotrust, and TD Friends of the Environment Foundation for support.