Rosa Vasquez Espinoza
- @rosavespinoza
- | she/her
Hi everyone, I lead an organization called Amazon Research Int in Peru and we have a fairly new project in the Amazon-Andes basin focused on reforestation of a 6-hr area impacted by the devastating fires last year, and regenerating and monitoring the tapir and giant armadillo species that are critical for indigenous culture. This work is done with indigenous communities as leaders and empowered by scientists and storytellers.
We have acquired Bushnell DS-4K cameras to generate a baseline of knowledge of the current tapir and giant armadillo populations so that we can monitor how the populations return with our efforts.
This work is happening in a UNESCO-recognized Biosphere where no camera traps have been installed in the past permanently. Thus this is a new area of work for us as well as the indigenous park rangers who are so excited to learn.
Any recommendations or advice regarding the equipment or the animals we are tracking would be very welcome! I'll keep everyone posted on our progress here as well as any questions or doubts that may come up to see if we can find solutions within the community.
Thank you very much!
Rosa
1 February 2025 12:42pm
Hi Rosa, how are you? do you need a company that can provide you with camera traps or tracking GPS devices?
3 February 2025 1:30pm
Greetings Rosa,
My name is Caroline from Born Free Foundation Kenya. We have been using Bushnell Camera Traps (not very sure about the model) for our beehive fencing project in Meru Conservation Area to help mitigate human-elephant conflict.
We also work in Amboseli Ecosystem, which is a UNESCO- recognized Biosphere Reserve but we haven't used the camera traps here.
I will be looking out for your updates on your work
Mark Bowler
University of Suffolk
4 February 2025 8:46am
Hi Rosa, Are you just monitoring the 6-hectare site? Or the larger connected area - is it the Avireri-Vraem Biosphere Reserve? It makes a big difference to what you can do and what any results actually mean. Monitoring in the various zones of the Avireri-Vraem Reserve (and/or the Reserva Comunal Ashaninka) would be tremendously exciting!
4 February 2025 9:56am
Great initiative! Super to see the indigenous people involved like this.
If you are keen to try some new technology, let me know. We have a range of thermal cameras and an AI triggered smart camera. Note there are power hurdles you would have to overcome that would require some solar tech I expect. But if you are willing to do that then it would pay off, as the thermal tech works in total darkness and the AI triggering uses high performant models that could see large mammals over large distances as opposed to around 6-10m for many PIR sensor triggered ones. (Polar bears over 130m for example). Also PIR sensors often start to fail as the temperature gets around 40 degrees, optical and even our thermal cameras would still be able to see. And also small animals due to their low thermal signature often need to get even closer for PIR based traps to trigger on them. It doesn't only work on one camera, so it could have a USB based optical camera as well. And so long as you don't add even more cameras, I'm pretty sure we could add a sound localizing acoustic recorder on to the same platform :)
Hows that for a camera trap? Local AI PIR-less triggering, video alerting, multiple USB connected cameras, thermal vision and sound localizing audio recorder, event as well as full frame mpeg video recording. All in one package. Plus remote live monitoring and data retrieval if you want.
This ultimately translates into less missed animals and less traps required for an area.
Robin Poches
Pochitroniks