Chimp & See Talk

Camera loss rate?

  • jwidness by jwidness moderator

    I happened to be reading this article about camera trapping and noticed they said they lost 40% of their cameras to elephants! I know C&S has lots of footage of animals interacting with the cameras. I'm wondering, how many C&S cameras didn't survive the trip to the field? How many went totally missing, and how many were made inoperable? Can you identify the species that broke the cameras in most cases?

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  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    it really depends on the site!

    covering the cameras with elephant dung helps in many cases but in some areas with elephants we loose between 2 and 10 cameras (of 30) to elephants

    a bigger problem for us is hunters, and i would say we get about half of those cameras back and usually our amazing field teams have village meetings to discuss such issues and mitigate them.

    we also have an issue with ants and fungi that eat away at our cameras too

    we probably have a loss of between 10 and 30 percent at each site would be my guess.

    check out our blog post from Gabon if you haven't yet: http://chimpandsee.blogspot.de/2016/01/field-update-camera-traps-in-gabon.html

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  • jwidness by jwidness moderator

    Interesting! I would not have guessed that ants and fungi could destroy a camera!

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  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    i just found this 😃 http://resourcemagonline.com/2016/06/check-out-the-damage-leaf-cutter-ants-inflicted-on-this-guys-camera-setup/67447/

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  • jwidness by jwidness moderator

    Wow! I love the moat solution though : )

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