College of Biological Sciences
Twin Cities
Minnesota's wolves (Canis lupus) are expanding southward, and a new pack recently became established at the University of Minnesota's Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (CCESR). This group's goal is to monitor the wildlife populations at CCESR to measure the impacts of wolves on the local abundances and spatial distributions of CCESR's diverse animal community, which includes wolf prey (e.g., whitetail deer) and competitors (e.g., black bear). The researchers have established a network of trail cameras across the reserve; data from the trail cameras will be processed online by citizen scientists and animal information and images will be used for both research and educational purposes. Camera trap images are processed on MSI machines for upload to the citizen science platform Zooniverse and resultant classification data will be stored on an SQL database hosted on an MSI server.
The Eyes on the Wild project was featured on the MSI website in February 2019: Eyes on the Wild.