Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Monday 22 January 2018
Motion-activated cameras capture animals being wild, weird

By MEAD GRUVER a population. “There’s this
Associated Press tension between subjectiv-
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — ity in where you put your
How does a bighorn sheep camera and where it’s sta-
say “cheese?” tistically sound,” Harris said.
Some charismatic critters Sometimes smart-alecky
caught by motion-detect- humans turn up among the
ing wildlife cameras seem images. “I’ve seen people
to know how to strike a moon cameras, and that’s
pose. But it’s not just show always funny,” he said.
business. As these devices Remote video can also re-
get ever smaller, cheaper veal details about animal
and more reliable, scien- behavior, including the
tists across the U.S. are us- mewling sounds of migrat-
ing them to document ing mule deer.
elusive creatures like never And live-streaming camer-
before. “There’s no doubt as for everything from bison
— it is an incredible tool to in Saskatchewan, Canada,
acquire data on wildlife,” to the underwater kelp for-
said Grant Harris, a U.S. Fish est off California’s Channel
and Wildlife Service wildlife Islands are always popular.
biologist based in Albu- As with all human intru-
querque, New Mexico. sion into nature, remote
Remote cameras have cameras have downsides.
photographed everything This 2011 photo from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service motion-activated camera shows an elephant Animals such as wolver-
from small desert cats seal in the Channel Islands National Park off the coast of Southern California. ines and bears have been
Associated Press known to attack them,
Wyoming associate profes- though whether out of cu-
sor and initiative director. riosity or aggression is hard
“You see one animal mi- to say. Also, the devices
grating, you don’t know if have become popular
it’s migrating by itself, if it’s tools to help hunters scout
migrating with a calf, or if for game, sparking a de-
it’s migrating with 40 other bate over fair-chase eth-
animals,” Kauffman said. ics. Then there’s the whole
Remote cameras — which subjective thing about go-
can be left in the back- ing into nature to get away
country for days, weeks from it all, including surveil-
or even months — help fill lance cameras.
in blanks by showing how Anyway, to answer the
many animals are on the question: A bighorn sheep
move over a given period, that looks like it’s smil-
he said. Where to position ing probably isn’t saying
them requires careful fore- “cheese” but sniffing pher-
thought. Clustering several omones and other scents
around a watering hole, in what’s called a flehmen
for instance, might pro- response, said Harris.
duce many images but In other words ... bleats
not a thorough profile of us.q

This 2013 photo from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service motion-
activated camera shows a bighorn sheep at the Kofa National
Wildlife Refuge in Arizona.
Associated Press
called ocelots to snow-lov- at higher latitudes in recent
ing lynx high in the North- years. That could mean
ern Rockies. Harris cited global warming is expand-
images of javelinas, pig-like ing their range northward,
desert mammals, and co- he said. Scientists deploy-
atimundi, members of the ing remote cameras in their
raccoon family, captured work include researchers
with the Wyoming Migra-
tion Initiative, who use
global positioning to map
the movements of elk, mule
deer and antelope in and
around Yellowstone Na-
tional Park. They only have
so many collars to track
animals, meaning there’s a
limit to the GPS data they
can gather, said Matthew In this 2017 photo from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service motion-activated camera, a vulture comes
in for a landing at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico.
Kauffman, a University of Associated Press