Show Notes
Researchers across the world rely on curious citizen scientists to be their eyes and ears, collecting data that can help solve some of the biggest questions in science. Citizen scientists can be anyone from any background who wants to volunteer their time to helping the scientific community learn more about the world around us.
At the Wisconsin DNR, we rely on these volunteers for a number of research projects, including Snapshot Wisconsin.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:00:16] Welcome back to another episode of Wild Wisconsin, Off the Record. I'm your host, Katie Grant. Imagine a 10 point buck staring right at you. Or maybe a bobcat and her kittens casually strolling by. A romp of otters playing in the snow. A rare whooping crane stretching out its wings. These are just a few of the amazing moments caught on camera through the DNR Snapshot Wisconsin project. Snapshot Wisconsin is a citizen science program that gets the public involved to help monitor Wisconsin's wildlife. Volunteers host a network of trail cameras that take snapshots of wildlife as they pass by. Volunteers then work to classify the species from their trail cameras with a little help from the public.
The data helps the DNR understand where certain animal populations exist around the state and is used to make important wildlife management decisions. In this episode, we sit down with Christine Anhalt-Depies, DNR's Snapshot Wisconsin Project Coordinator, to talk about the impact of this groundbreaking project and how you can get involved.
All right. Hello Christine, welcome to the show. Uh, you've been here before, but why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do here for the DNR.
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:01:37] Yeah. Hi Katie. Thanks so much for having me again. I'm glad to be here. My name is Christine Anhalt-Depies. I am a Research Scientist uh, within the Office of Applied Science and I coordinate the Snapshot Wisconsin project.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:01:51] So, we're going to get into that a little bit more in a second, but April is Citizen Science month. It's the time where we get to celebrate the volunteers from really all walks of life who get involved in the research that we do by collecting data, analyzing results and really helping us solve some of the biggest mysteries in science. We have projects all over the DNR in many different fields where we utilize the help of everyday residents of Wisconsin. And Snapshot Wisconsin, as you mentioned is just one of those. Can you explain to us what Snapshot Wisconsin is, and kind of what its goal is?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:02:27] So Snapshot Wisconsin is a volunteer-run statewide trail camera network for monitoring wildlife. Its goals are to provide a unique opportunity for public engagement in natural resources and to produce information that can be used in wildlife management decision-making. The project started out small in just a few areas of the state back in 2015. It started as a pilot project to really refine our methods. We were working just in monitoring the elk herds of Wisconsin. We then started working with a number of volunteers in a limited number of counties back in 2016. And the program launched statewide in 2018. And today our network has over 2100 cameras and over 2000 volunteers.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:03:16] I didn't realize that initially started with monitoring the elk herd. I think that's a really interesting fact that, you know, it started with this one project and has kind of grown to be much more than it is.
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:03:29] That's right. So we still continue to monitor the elk herd today with Snapshot Wisconsin cameras and it was the perfect place to start off the project. And, um, it's been fun to continue to see the project grow well beyond that.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:03:42] What are the ways that people can get involved in Snapshot Wisconsin? I know there's a couple of different methods, right?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:03:47] That's right. So, first off, I just want to define Citizen Scientists that are often, um, you know, we often hear this term, but really it just means these are members of the public who are partnering with scientists to conduct research. Um, and what's neat about Citizen Science is oftentimes there's research projects that would not be possible at all without Citizen Scientist support. And so, you know, Snapshot Wisconsin is a perfect example of one of those projects that would not be possible without Citizen Scientists.
Um, trail cameras of course are popular among ecologists to study wildlife, but it takes a lot of people power to deploy trail cameras and also maintain them. So in the case of Snapshot, the volunteers, the Citizen Scientists are those who are responsible for putting out the cameras, keeping them going and also submitting the photos to the Wisconsin DNR. And in our project, Citizen Scientists also play a huge role in helping to identify the wildlife that are collected by these trail camera photos.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:04:54] So if I were to volunteer to have a trail cam on my property, what sort of a time commitment is involved with that?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:05:02] Sure. So the, the first way, um, to volunteer for the program would be to host a trail camera. And we ask those volunteers to commit to hosting a trail camera for at least a year. Now we do have volunteers who stick around for much longer than that. We have some volunteers who are reaching their fifth year with the program, which is neat to see volunteers wanting to continue to participate for that long.
The trail cameras themselves need to be checked just four times a year. So it's not a significant time commitment in terms of needing to go out, um, and exchange batteries and collect photos.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:05:39] Let's say I have five minutes on a Saturday. Is that enough for me to jump online and start identifying photos? Or do I have to commit to anything with that? Or how does that work?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:05:49] Yeah. So the second way that folks can get involved in the Snapshot Wisconsin project is to help classify photos or identify what's in the photos. And while our trail camera hosts identify many of the wildlife photos, those that they don't have time to identify, or those that are particularly difficult to identify go online to a crowdsourcing website, where anyone from around the world actually can go on to help review photos.
And we do have individuals who come to that crowdsourcing site and just look at a few photos and never come back. But others who really get hooked on identifying wildlife and come back on a regular basis to see what they're going to find. So that's another great way to get involved in the project if you just have five minutes or are looking for something fun to do in the evening.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:06:35] If I'm interested in becoming a volunteer either through hosting a trail camera or even, you know, checking out the website and helping identify photos, do I need to have any sort of background knowledge or is there training to help get me started? Or what do I need to know there?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:06:50] If you're going to be a trail camera host, or if you're just looking to classify photos, there is really no specialized training or experience that you need. So for our trail camera hosts, once you sign up for the program you're going to get all the equipment and the training you need to participate.
So no previous experience with trail cameras is needed. And the same goes for identifying wildlife. On our online crowdsourcing website, we have a ton of really great resources, um, that can help in learning to identify different Wisconsin wildlife species. And again, we have folks from all over the world who might not be familiar with Wisconsin wildlife helping to identify, uh, these critters. The other great thing about identifying wildlife online is that multiple people are looking at each photo. And so even if you're uncertain, we encourage you to take your best guess knowing that multiple people are taking a look at each photo and we're able to get a highly accurate consensus classification.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:07:48] Can you tell me a little bit about why it is so helpful and really important that we get the public involved in these sort of natural resource management projects?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:07:58] To me, our state's natural resources are one of the things that make, um, living in Wisconsin so special, are our shared natural resources.
We all enjoy them and use them. And so it just makes good sense that the public should have a role in monitoring and managing our natural resources. And in the case of Snapshot Wisconsin, this collaboration with the public makes for a much more robust representative, reliable data set than could be possible otherwise. And so every single time I talk about Snapshot Wisconsin, I like to point out that the project is people-powered and that it's absolutely not possible without volunteers.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:08:41] Yeah, it sure would be difficult for us to get all of that information on our own with you know, just our employees.
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:08:48] Right. Our Snapshot Wisconsin volunteers last year donated over 20,000 hours of their time. Um, which you can imagine would even be more hours if DNR staff had to say, travel to different locations all throughout the state to monitor these wildlife species. So it's a really efficient and effective method of monitoring wildlife.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:09:09] Recently, the project reached 50 million photos, which I think is something that's really exciting and should be celebrated. What does that milestone mean to the project and the entire Snapshot team?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:09:22] Reaching the 50 million, uh, photo milestone was huge for both our project and our team. I mean the number 50 million, it's really hard to even get your head around. Before this conversation, I just did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation.
And when we say 50 million photos, that would be, um, about eight and a half photos for each person living in Wisconsin. So that really gives you a sense of the, the huge number of photos that have been collected by our, our Snapshot volunteers. And to me, the 50 million represents that dedication of our volunteers. All the hours they've donated and also how important Wisconsin wildlife is to them.
And as I've mentioned, these 50 million photos also represent a ton of data and information about wildlife that wasn't previously available. So that's incredibly meaningful as well. Especially given that we have trail cameras that cover the entire state. And we're also building up years of data and that makes the dataset even better for research and data analysis.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:10:26] Can you talk a little bit about that data analysis and how we actually use that in the projects? Are, are there any particular projects that it's used in? Can you talk a little bit more about that?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:10:37] So there's a couple of different ways that data collected through Snapshot are being used. The first is all our deer photos. Of all the animal photos that we collected, Snapshot Wisconsin deer make up about two-thirds of those animal photos. And for the past few years, the Snapshot Wisconsin deer photos have been contributing to fawn to doe ratio calculations. Now, these fawn to doe ratio calculations are one of the major components of the model used to assess the size of the whitetail deer populations in Wisconsin. That's of course, a very important metric that we use to make management decisions about our deer population. In addition, Snapshot Wisconsin photos are used to calculate calf to cow ratios, um, for elk as well as population estimates for elk. Another piece about snapshot, uh, in terms of how the data is being used.
Snapshot has been useful in detecting rare species, including moose, martin, and also whooping cranes. Just a few days ago, um, we had a trail camera that detected our second and third whooping cranes since the startup project. And we continue to expand the ways that Snapchat Wisconsin have used in wildlife management decision-making. So this is really just the beginning.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:11:59] Uh, it's always fun to see the kind of funny photos that come out of it. Right? I mean, they're, they're not used for research in any way, but when you have a deer that looks like it's, you know, almost talking to the trail camera, um, it's always really fun to see that.
So if anyone's ever interested in looking at those, obviously, you know, log on and, and volunteer to classify photos, but check out our Facebook page every Saturday too. Because we try to post some of the best ones there. What are some of the new tools and resources that Snapshot has released lately to kind of continue evolving the project?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:12:33] We recently released the Snapshot Wisconsin data dashboard. And data dashboard is really just a visualization tool, a data visualization tool that makes Snapshot Wisconsin data viewable to the public. And because the public helped us to generate these data, the dashboard offers an opportunity for them to go ahead and explore the data themselves.
This dashboard is a series of interactive maps and graphs. You can see the data for over 15 species. Things like wildlife presence and activity patterns. You can also view the data from individual counties or across the entire state and make comparisons. And you can actually even download maps or data sets and share those with family and friends. So it's a great way to learn about the information that Snapshot Wisconsin is producing.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:13:25] If I'm interested in becoming a volunteer and hosting a camera, can I apply year-round? And are there any sort of requirements in terms of the amount of land that I have or where these can go or anything like that?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:13:37] We are continually accepting new volunteers to be trail camera hosts for Snapshot Wisconsin. We do have some requirements, uh, for the minimum size that we're looking for from participants. Minimum acreage size that we're looking for. Um, this is mainly to make sure that we are capturing natural animal movement.
We want to put these cameras on 10 acres of land or greater. And if you have a private property that is smaller than 10 acres, we can make up, um, exceptions. Um, if your property say butts up against, um, uh, public... public property and together, um, there would be more than 10 acres of forest in that area. If you don't have access to land that's privately... privately owned, you can also, also host a trail camera on public land with permission. And all you would need to do to get started...to sign up to be a trail camera host would be to go to the DNR website and search for Snapshot Wisconsin. That will take you to the Snapshot Wisconsin web page where you can learn more and sign up for the program. And of course, if folks just want to help to identify wildlife photos, they can do that at any time. No need to create a login or, or sign up. You would just go straight to the website snapshotwisconsin.org and you can start helping to identify photos from across the state.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:15:05] Is there anything else that you want us to know about the Snapshot Wisconsin program?
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:15:10] Snapshot Wisconsin is a really great way to get involved in monitoring our state's natural resources. It's incredibly easy to get started. You don't have to have any prior experience. Um, and there's multiple opportunities to get involved. If you want to host a trail camera or host multiple trail cameras or looking for less of a commitment, uh, you can still help out in classifying photos online. And, uh, I think the Snapshot Wisconsin project really shows the power of people-powered research and what can be done when we work together to monitor our state's natural resources.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:15:48] It's always really fun for me to see when, like I said, those photos ended up on Facebook and a volunteer whose property it was on chime in and say, Oh my God, that was on my property. My favorites are always when it's a teacher who, you know, they, they host one, uh, at the school forest or something and get the kids involved or they get their students involved in, uh, classifying photos.
So it's not just something for adults to do. Kids, students can get involved in this too. It's a really great way for them to learn about a Wisconsin's natural resources, our wildlife, uh, and, and help science along the way.
CHRISTINE ANHALT-DEPIES: [
00:16:23] Absolutely. We actually have over 300 educators who are participating in Snapshot Wisconsin. These might be, um, our traditional K through 12 educators. Um, or naturalists that work at a nature center and it's always fun to see the, the huge number of individuals that they're reaching, um, beyond just the one individual who's hosting a trail camera. So they really helped to expand the reach of Snapshot Wisconsin and get a more diverse group of people engaged in the program.
KATIE GRANT: [
00:16:55] Interested in hosting a trail camera of your own? Visit dnr.wi.gov and search Snapshot Wisconsin for more information on how you can get involved. Have questions? Email us. dnrpodcast@wisconsin.gov.
SARAH HOYE: [
00:17:12] You've been listening to Wild Wisconsin. A podcast brought to you by the Wisconsin DNR. For more great episodes listen and subscribe to Wild Wisconsin wherever you get your podcasts.