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The project so far

 

Eyes on Wildlife has officially been in action for 9 months! The 2018-2019 school year is off to a great start so let’s check in on everything that has happened so far.

After a summer of camera trapping, our teachers have doubled the wildlife detections in our project. White-tailed deer have managed to overtake the eastern gray squirrel in detections; there are now over 200 more detections of deer than squirrel. We also detected four new species this summer: bobcat, coyote, eastern chipmunk and the eastern fox squirrel.…

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Springing into Summer

 

An end to the school year brings the end of Eyes on Wildlife’s first spring semester, but definitely not the last!

Since starting in January of 2018, we have trained 18 local middle and high school teachers and engaged over 370 students in eMammal. These teachers and students were from 15 different schools in 6 school districts. You can see a map of these schools below.

 

By far the most commonly detected species were white-…

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Our First Deployments!

 

Spring is finally arriving in Front Royal and now we’re starting to see our first deployments from teachers in Warren and Rappahannock Counties.  With our camera traps, students have seen what local wildlife are up to while they’re in class.  You can see below some of our favorite photos!

One class’s deployment at Warren County High School found that white-tailed deer and eastern gray squirrels were the most frequent visitors to their school. They also found this amazing photo of a raptor in mid-flight! 

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Sleeping Away Winter: The American Black Bear

 

Spring is on its way and that means winter hibernations are ending. One hibernating Virginia mammal we see on camera traps is the American Black Bear (Ursus americanus). They entered their dens around November and now that it’s spring, they are emerging. Black bears have a wide range across North America which is shown in the map below. In the more Northern latitudes they can hibernate for up to 7 months. Here in Virginia though, it’s usually shorter and they may even emerge from their dens to forage during the winter if the weather is warm enough. If…

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Camera trapping with Virginia Teachers

 

The Eyes on Wildlife project is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Friends of the National Zoo, and teachers in the Front Royal, Virginia area to bring eMammal citizen science to middle school and high school students. Teachers can use eMammal lesson plans created using Virginia Standards of Learning as well as collect their own data for analysis in the classroom.

In January 2018, we invited…

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