Calgary Captured Wildlife Identification

Calgary Captured Needs Your Help

Calgary Captured is a project that utilizes the internet (both technologically and help from volunteers like you) to identify and categorize which species of wildlife call Calgary home. Placed throughout various Calgary Parks were a number of trail cameras that took photos of any/all wildlife that happened to pass by it, using motion sensors. To date the project is only 1% complete (as of June 2019) which means there is a lot left to do. Over 3100 volunteers have helped look through photos so far, but anyone can help. It takes no time to jump right in and begin flipping through photos, you don’t even need to register an account. You should register though! You’ll be able to track your progress, plus you can save the favourite pictures you find.

What they hope to accomplish with the Calgary Captured project

• What species are occurring in Calgary’s parks system;
• Exploration of how human activities impact wildlife movement in parks (are species temporally displaced from trails);
• Validation of wildlife corridor modeling done for Calgary; and
• Long-term monitoring to assess trends and patterns of terrestrial mammals occurring in Calgary.

Click here to read about all of their research.

Interesting Facts

• Images captured at 61 different camera locations.
• Four cameras were stolen between May – August in 2017 (6% camera loss in first 3 months).
• 31.9% of dog events across all natural areas were off-leash in on-leash areas.
• Wildlife activity peaks at 6:00 am and 8:00 pm.
• Coyote and deer were recorded at all study area parks.
• Human activity did not shift wildlife activity patterns.
• It took 87 days until a Weasel was first detected.
• Fish Creek Provincial Park had the most variety of wildlife captured on camera.
• In May of 2019 36,764 different animals were identified by people.
  • On the Zooniverse platform they call them ‘classifications’, before there are other projects than just Calgary Captured on there.

Read the full results here.

Current Calgary Parks With Wildlife Cameras:

• Paskapoo Slopes
• Tom Campbell’s Hill
• Ralph Klein Park
• Inglewood Bird Sanctuary
• Edworthy Park/Lawrey Gardens
• Bowmont Park
• Griffith Woods
• Nosehill Park
• Edgemont Ravines
• West Nose Creek (Confluence Park)
• North/South Glenmore Park/Weaselhead
• Haskayne
• Hidden Valley

How Does Calgary Captured Work?

There’s a tutorial, but basically you look at an image and click a button to indicate which kind of animal you think it is. They have a list of 33 varieties to choose from, including humans (they’re such a pest). Other people can chime in and leave their opinions about it too, really making use of the crowd sourcing platform.

 

Calgary Captured Tutorial

If you need it, they have an easy to use tutorial that explains everything. You don’t need to login to access it! Click here to visit their site, click Tutorial on the top.

 

 

Calgary Captured Forum

In addition to hosting the platform, Zooniverse has a discussion forum for the Calgary Captured project. Access it here.

You can also respond to photos directly and discuss them with other users.

Conclusion

The platform that makes this possible is called Zooniverse and it has several other projects just like this one that need human help. Here’s one transcribing prisoner records from Australia. Another one transcribing records from shipwrecks. Maybe you want to pour over UK weather records and help digitize them. It’s actually really cool! I’m going to stick to helping Calgary but you do you. Go find something that means something to you and help the world.

Have fun! Go find Bigfoot.