Wildlife cameras snap shots of Calgary's urban critters

From deer andmoose to birds and bobcats, most Calgariansget a glimpse of the animals we share the city with from time to time.

But a new program from the city is tracking how our fuzzy and feathered friends use Calgary's public parks and forested areas to help the city make better decisions around conservation and reduceharmful interactions between humans and wildlife.

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Chris Manderson, urban conservation lead with the City of Calgary, says the city has set up nearly 70 motion-activated wildlife cameras in areas animals use to get around the Calgary.

"We're interested in healthy urbanecosystems, healthy parks. A big part of that is how do wildlife use them and how do thy move,"Mandersontold theCalgary Eyeopener.

He says the cameras are in 12 parks across Calgary with a focus on the west and north sides ofthe city. Most of the animal activity inside city limitsis happening around the city's rivers whilea lot of the wildlife iscoming to Calgary from the west throughSpringbank, thePaskapooSlopesand theWeaselheadFlats.

"We don't need cameras to know we have wildlife in the city, that's pretty easy. But where they move is what we're interested in. So [the cameras] have been set up in a way that will help us give a sense of how they are using our spaces and where they're going."

Tens of thousands of pictures of passing animalshave been captured by the solar-poweredcameras and the city is just starting to go through all of the collected data.

Mandersonsays any pictures of humans are immediately deleted, so any Calgarianworried that they may have been candidly captured on camera doing something odd in the urban wilderness can put their fears to rest.

"There's certainly a wide variety of behaviours, let's put it that way," Manderson said with a laugh when talking about people caught on camera.

"We screen out allpicturesof people and dispose of them, I'm not even allowed to see them," he said,adding the city went through a lengthy privacy assessment before setting up the cameras last spring.

Who's who in the urban zoo?

The cameras have been busy snappingshots of Calgary's usual wildlife suspectslike white-tail deer, moose and coyotes but the project has already helped confirmthe presence of a masked bandit the city has had suspicionsabout for sometime.

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"We've got photographic evidence of raccoons throughout this city,"Mandersonsaid. "We know they've been here for probably about 25 years, but seeing themin Fish Creek and in the Weaselhead and all the way up into the Panorama area this summer was interesting to see."

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Manderson says the city is still working to see if the cameras have documented any large predators lumbering throughthe city, like when a large grizzly bear was spottedin Calgary's southwest in September.

"We're not certain yet because we haven't gone through all the images but that's one [species] we're paying some attention to," he said, adding there have also been no confirmed cougar pictures but "we know they are in town."

Get involved with some citizen science

Because the cameras are motion-activated and can be triggered by anything that crosses their lens like waving grass or falling branches Mandersonsays one of the cameras alone has taken around 20,000 images.

With so many photos to go through,Mandersonsays the city will be launching a "citizen science" initiative on the volunteer researchwebsiteZooniverseto enlist thehelp of Calgariansto "crowdsource"the identification process.

"We're hoping in the next week or two to have this upYou can log in and you can help us identify the images," he said.

Data on animal activity in the city reported to 3-1-1 is also being worked into the project to give the city a better understanding of how animals get around town and reduce the harm done to wildlife in Calgary.

"They're here, they are using not only our parks, but they're in our communities as well," Manderson said. "Maybe it'll give us insight into reducing human-animal conflict when building new communities."

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With files from the Calgary Eyeopener