Snodgrass Photography Blog

It's amazing what 420 cameras (including 60 trap cameras) can catch on film in just two years. On August 15, 2011, Conservation International released the first of almost 52,000 thousand images captured from the largest global camera trap mammal study, conducted by a group of local and international scientists. From the tiniest mouse to the mighty African elephant, researchers reached one conclusion, "Habitat loss and smaller reserves have a direct and detrimental impact on the diversity and survival of mammal populations."

Cameras placed from Uganda to Tanzania

The mammal study, led by Dr. Jorge Ahumada, an ecologist with the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) Network at Conservation International, involved placing a camera for one month periods to document mammal species in seven areas: The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda; Udzungwa Mountains National Park in Tanzania; Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Indonesia; Nam Kading National Protected Area, in Laos; Central Suriname Nature Reserve in Suriname; Manaus in Brazil and the Volcan Barva Transect of Costa Rica.

Once the images were collected, scientists categorized animals by species, body size and diet. What they learned was that larger habitats and reserves had three commonalities: they contained a higher number of species, supported a larger variety of sizes and provided more diet variations than smaller reserves. Dr. Amuhada said this proved important because it confirms, "What we suspected: habitat destruction is slowly but surely killing our planet's mammal diversity."

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