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-tailed deer and eastern gray squirrels. In total, we photographed 13 different species in 1,645 detections of wildlife. We hope to detect some new species such as coyote, striped skunk and bobcat over the summer.

One of our new favorite photos is this squirrel checking on his bum. Yep, it’s still there!

Over 60% of the camera locations were on school property. At Warren County High School, students were surprised to see a  black bear on their camera trap.

With all of this success, we are ready to expand Eyes on Wildlife even further! We plan to hold additional trainings for teachers through September so even more students can participate in camera trapping. By the end of the 2018-2019 school year, our goal is to add 19 more schools to Eyes on Wildlife.

Until the school year starts, trained teachers are becoming familiar with using the camera traps and collecting data. For the summer, they are able to borrow a camera and place it in public parks and their own backyards. Then in the fall, they already have data for students to compare with the school yards.