The Wildlife Observatory (aka WildObs) has one overarching goal: Equipping Australia to address our most pressing wildlife questions with robust data and analysis tools. For example, we were largely caught flatfooted when the megafires hit and had to scramble to initiate brand new projects to assess impacts and track recovery. In the future, we can be ready to resample existing long-term monitoring sites using a standardized protocol, avoiding a time lag between an unpredictable event and measurement of the effects on wildlife communities. Many terrestrial animals can be efficiently monitored with camera traps, and there is a government-funded organization already committed to hosting biodiversity survey data, the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN). There is a general consensus amongst researchers, stakeholders and landscape managers for a need to efficiently improve Australia's wildlife monitoring via camera trap standardization, data collation, and synthesis.

 

Therefore, the role of WildObs will be to: 

1. establish TERN-approved manual for standardized repeatable cameras deployments

2. promote the use of this new standard and data sharing with TERN

3. host annual workshops to build trust and collaborations across Australia's many camera trapping organizations (and to listen and remedy any problems)

4. provide robust easy-to-use analytical tools back to the data providers