CALIFORNIA FISH AND WILDLIFE'S PARTNERSHIP WITH WILDLIFE INSIGHTS FOR STORING, PROCESSING, AND SHARING CAMERA IMAGES

Lindsey Rich; California Department of Fish and Wildlife; lindsey.rich@wildlife.ca.gov;

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) deploys thousands of cameras at strategic locations throughout the state to estimate wildlife distributions and population demographics, which is a critical step in detecting declines, managing populations, and understanding ecosystem health. The thousands of cameras produce tens of millions of images, which present data storage, processing, and sharing challenges. To address these challenges, CDFW partnered with Wildlife Insights, an online platform for storing, identifying, and analyzing camera trap data. Wildlife Insights has enabled CDFW to increase the security of its photos and holistically manage photos so that information can be shared across regions and programs, and assessments of wildlife communities can be done at landscape scales using existing camera data. Further, Wildlife Insights’ computer vision model expedites the processing of photos by automatically identifying blank images (e.g., images of moving vegetation), vehicles, and species, which users can then review and manually verify. CDFW staff from across the state have uploaded over 32 million images from across 10,250 camera deployments to Wildlife Insights, and there will be many more to come as historical data and new projects transition to the platform. 

Use of AI for Processing Camera Trap Images  InPerson Presentation