We employ a variant of the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) network terrestrial vertebrate protocol (http://www.teamnetwork.org/protocols/bio/terrestrial-vertebrate) at Organ Pipe Cactus NM. 60 permanent camera sites (co-located with long-term vegetation and soils monitoring plots) are monitored from March - May of each year.
Our goals are to (1) Detect the occurrence of key medium and large mammal species; (2) detect changes in estimated species richness of medium and large mammals over time; (3) determine changes in multi-species occupancy and distributions within the park.
Cuddeback E2 remote cameras ("normal" sensitivity) are mounted 25cm above the soil surface on temporary wooden stakes during the deployment. Cameras are deployed and retrieved by crews of NPS staff, cooperators, and citizen scientists.