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posted by janrinok on Friday October 28 2016, @03:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the say-cheese! dept.

North Carolina libraries will begin to lend out motion-activated cameras for citizens to track backyard wildlife as part of the Candid Critters program:

The News & Observer of Raleigh reports organizers of the Candid Critters program hope to have the camera traps at 20,000 to 30,000 locations in backyards, state and national parks, game lands and forests over a three-year period. The cameras will be camouflaged and use an infrared flash so they don't disturb the animals when they go off. "For a long time, scientists have wanted to collect this kind of large-scale data using camera traps," said Roland Kays, the head of the Biodiversity Research Lab at the state Museum of Natural Sciences. "But it's daunting to do by yourself. We basically have built an e-Mammal data management system so that researchers can see and use the information that comes from citizen scientists' camera traps."

Kays said scientists are especially interested in studying the distribution patterns of deer across the state, and how that relates to the number of coyotes. Coyotes aren't native to North Carolina, but they have increased in recent years. Kays said scientists also hope the project will yield new information about bears, skunks, chipmunks, feral hogs and other animals.

Also at WUNC.


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 28 2016, @04:38AM

    by frojack (1554) on Friday October 28 2016, @04:38AM (#419724) Journal

    Is this a big sport or something?
    Thousands of pictures of stray cats and dogs and urban deer hardly seem worth the effort.

    Put them out in the woods and fields where they belong.

     

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @05:02AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @05:02AM (#419732)

      Oh for sure there will be a bunch of that. But in NC you *will* get other things.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @06:30AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @06:30AM (#419750)

        Hogs

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @07:13AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @07:13AM (#419756)

          Possibly.

          Here is the conversation I had with my new neighbor a few years ago. I had not mowed my yard short enough (for him) as I was letting it grow a bit because it was newly seeded. I found him bashing his lawn mower on the side of my house. Considering I was napping and it was an odd sound to come from the side of the house.

          "what are you doing?"
          "you need to mow your yard every week or we will get snakes, it looks like shit"
          "fuck you and dude its north carolina of course there are snakes"
          "I have not seen one since I have been mowing my yard short"
          "there is a forest RIGHT behind our houses there *are* snakes and skunks no amount of mowing will change that"
          "well you need to mow your yard shorter or I will call the police"
          "tell you what, wait right here and I will go call them for you for trespassing and vandalism"

          In hind sight I should have let him finish then gone out on the porch and wave and laughed at him. But my temper got the best of me.

          Another dude I worked with was MIA one day. Because he had obliterated a deer on the way to work and had to find a new car. This was not in the country. This is in the middle of a town early in the morning.

          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 28 2016, @12:30PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday October 28 2016, @12:30PM (#419811) Journal

            It's surprising the guy was bashing his lawnmower against your house, in a state with pretty high gun ownership. Was he from Connecticut or something?

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 28 2016, @07:07PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Friday October 28 2016, @07:07PM (#419930)

        Drunk people and naked teens?

    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday October 28 2016, @05:41PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday October 28 2016, @05:41PM (#419901) Journal

      Why?
       
      It's called science. Once upon a time so-called nerds were into that sort of thing.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @11:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @11:19PM (#419991)

      It's being done.
      Assessing the effectiveness of that seems like a good idea.
      Without proper review of the results, you get this:
      Eastern Puma to be Removed From Endangered Species List (Declared Extinct) [soylentnews.org]
      from the ecosystems-without-apex-predators dept.

      urban deer

      An AC in this (sub)thread has already mentioned what an exploding population of that prey species gets humans when the ecosystem is out of balance.
      ...likely because of humans shooting predator species willy-nilly.

      TFS also mentions coyotes and how they aren't native to the region.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 1) by C R Johnson on Friday October 28 2016, @02:15PM

    by C R Johnson (5368) on Friday October 28 2016, @02:15PM (#419847)

    My wife brought home one of these from the Ann Arbor Public library recently. I gather they have been available for some time.

    It didn't work too well for her as the birds were not particularly interested in using the new feeder she put out.

    Much cooler are the fossils (Ok, replicas) they lend out. My son was stoked to bring home a huge chunk of T-Rex skull and several Sabre Tooth Cat skulls.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @05:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @05:52PM (#419903)

    Last fall I drove across central Maine on 2-lane, a delightful road trip through the woods. The V1 radar detector squawked/flashed for X-band radar a few dozen times. There wasn't any traffic and I never saw any cops by the side of the road. Some research suggested that what I was detecting was the radar on these wildlife cameras -- perhaps researchers or hunters had put them out in the woods to track animal movements?

    If you have a problem with speeders in front of your house, one of these might help?