Conservation International (Team Network) Meeting – Jorge Ahumada and Eric Fegraus

Tropical Ecology, Assessment and Monitoring (Team) Network was formed by Conservation International (CI) amongst other conservation issues, to collect and distribute camera trap data on trends in biodiversity across the globe. The team of scientists and local operatives is gathering an enormous data set on medium to large sized mammals in some of the world’s most precious tropical forests. They are using Reconyx camera traps although they have had some problems with water leakage in the first Hyperfire cameras, although it seems this problem may have been overcome by Reconyx. Moisture is a big problem and they are now using 6 x rechargeable batteries and using desiccant in the top battery chamber.

The TEAM Network has been very active in developing standards and protocols for their surveys and best of all have an amasing software package called DeskTEAM that has revolutionised uploading SIM card data direct from the card to a storage and identification program. This program extracts all the EXIF data directly to a system that then allows you to code your data and export to a preferred program for further analysis. Eric Fegraus and colleagues have just published a paper on the system in Ecological Informatics which should be available soon. I was very impressed with the program and its capabilities and the DeskTeam are keen to expand the program even further. I hope to be a conduit in this regard.

Team Network are currently carrying out studies in 17 locations and plan to expand that 40 sites across the globe.

Fig Extracted from TEAM Network brochure.

I see some great opportunities for building partnerships with Desk Team, especially in regards to camera trapping research, analysis and collaborations – and I believe many other groups have already expressed interest in establishing links to the group.  I was very impressed with the work Team Network has done and was encouraged by the openness and sharing principles that Jorge and his colleagues have adopted.

Sadly my next meeting with Bill O’Shea had to be cancelled for family reasons so its off to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to meet with camera manufacturers. I am very disappointed that I had lodged my travel plans with the Churchill Fellowship before I was introduced to Roland Kays – so close Roland yet so far, I’m very disappointed we won’t get to meet, in hindsight this was less that ideal. I hope we can have a skype meeting while I am in the US.

The Camera Trapping questionnaire has fielded 90 responses and I have now uploaded the data to analyse the answers – interesting but I had hoped for hundreds of responses.

More soon ……………………