Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Texas
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Trail cameras are commonly used to monitor wildlife in a variety of situations. These motion activated cameras can result in a huge volume of digital images, many of which do not contain animals. The screening process is time and labor intensive. Our goal is to develop a machine learning method that will allow an automated process to determine images that do and do not have wildlife present. Those with positive detections can them be sent to a folder for human evaluation. This project is being funded by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. If this process is successful, it will provide a substantial cost savings to agencies and other researchers using motion activated cameras as part of research and/or monitoring programs.