Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

Snapshot Wisconsin July News

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources sent this bulletin at 07/02/2018 05:00 PM CDT

Snapshot Wisconsin July 2018 News

Science Update - Deer Observations

Snapshot Wisconsin trail cameras are capturing antlered deer and fawns when we would expect them to. Antlered deer observations increase in summer as antlers are growing and peak in fall in correspondence with the rut. The decline of antlered deer observations in December is due to harvest of antlered deer and being past the rutting season. The further decline of antlered deer observations into the winter and a corresponding increase in antlerless deer observations during this time is due to bucks dropping their antlers. Fawn observations begin to increase in June as fawns transition from hiding to traveling, and peak in July and August once they are moving with the doe full time. Fawn observations drop off in September as spots are lost and these then become antlerless deer observations. The reason for some fawns being classified throughout the year is likely because camera hosts are able to identify individual deer on their cameras and keep track of fawns of the year long past when they lose their spots. Only doe and fawn photos from the months of July and August are used to determine fawn to doe ratios.

Volunteer Help Needed: Phase II launch

A big announcement is coming later this summer regarding Phase II of Snapshot Wisconsin and we need your help! We are going to be doing a big outreach campaign in August and would love to involve volunteers. We are looking for short videos of volunteers, including kids or students, sharing what you love about the project or the coolest animal you have seen on your Snapshot Wisconsin camera. Videos can be transferred to us by using wetransfer.com. No registration on that site is needed, just enter your email, attach the file, and enter our email (DNRSnapshotWisconsin@wisconsin.gov) then click transfer. Direct written quotes or still photos can also be emailed to us directly.

We are also looking for a trail camera site near Madison where we could host a Facebook Live event. If you are willing to host a few members of the Snapshot team on your property, and you get good cellphone reception at the camera site, please send an email to DNRSnapshotWisconsin@wisconsin.gov.

Finally, if you have fun photos of visiting your trail camera site, particularly with kids, or you have really interesting, fun photos from your camera please get in touch with us about doing an Instagram takeover.

What is the Phase II launch? Stay tuned to find out! Coming August 9th, 2018...

Zooniverse Updates - Season 9 Launch

Season 9 of Snapshot Wisconsin on Zooniverse launched today, Monday, July 2nd. Thanks to all of our online volunteers for patiently waiting for the new season. The team has been busy prepping an extra large season and getting our data re-organized behind the scenes.

Volunteers may notice some older photos in this season. We are working to get all of our data through last summer moved through Zooniverse in order for one of the PhD students on the project, John Clare, to have a complete data set.

Volunteer Appreciation Events

The Snapshot Wisconsin staff are really thrilled to see so many volunteers reaching their one year anniversary in the project! The map to the right shows the locations across the state of all volunteers who have reached 1 year of participation. Some folks have even reached the two year mark recently. Thanks so much to all of our wonderful trail camera hosts who are dedicated to this project!

We are working on setting up some volunteer appreciation events for later this summer or early fall. Everyone who has reached at least one year of participation in the project will be invited via email. Currently we are investigating locations in Jackson County and either the greater Milwaukee or Madison area. Future events will be scheduled for northern and western areas of Wisconsin.

Citizen Science on WPR!

One of the project coordinators for Snapshot Wisconsin, Susan Frett, was on The Morning Show with Carrie Kaufman last week. Susan was joined by Wisconsin Citizen Based Monitoring Coordinator, Eva Lewandowski in an hour long show about citizen science at the Wisconsin DNR. It was fun to get to talk to callers and share more about our work here at DNR. Find out more and listen to a recording of the show here.

Recently on the Blog

We have had some interesting features over on our blog this past month. Check out the links below for all the details on our new outreach events, an elk calf search experience and our prairie chicken pilot study.

Snap-a-thons

Elk Calf Searching

June #SuperSnap

A Booming Success: Prairie Chickens and Trail Cameras

Spotlight Photo of the Month

We will share one awesome animal photo each month. To enter one of your favorites from a Snapshot Wisconsin camera please send the image as a jpeg attachment with the animal classification, county location and date taken along with the reason why you love the image to DNRSnapshotWisconsin@wisconsin.gov.

This month's image was submitted from a trail camera host in St. Croix County. This deer was captured making a perfect leap across a snowy scene in March of 2018.

Other interesting photos from our cameras can be viewed and classified on our Zooniverse page.

Contact Information for Snapshot Wisconsin

Email:DNRSnapshotWisconsin@wisconsin.gov

Phone: 608-572-6103

Signup to Host a Trail Camera: www.SnapshotWISignup.org

Participate on Zooniverse: www.SnapshotWisconsin.org

Find out more details on our webpage:

dnr.wi.gov Keyword "Snapshot Wisconsin

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