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Friday, April 16, 2021
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New Wisconsin Trail Cameras

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"trail cameras in the woods"

Trail Cameras are the latest Wisconsin project.

Scientists from Wisconsin have come up with a new idea to catalog wild animals by using thousands of trail cameras. If this plan succeeds, they will find out how many deer and other living mammals are throughout the state.

Researchers from Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin-Madison aim to place across the state a number of 6,000 motion-activated trail cameras. Scientists will upload every photo to a crowd-sourcing website.

This way, viewers can bring their contribution by trying to identify the animals from the pictures. The target of this project is to determine the animal populations and their movements.

According to Phil Townsend, one of the project leaders and a UW-Madison forestry professor, the most significant benefit is that thanks to these cameras, scientists will be able to cover all areas, to provide exact data and an enormous amount of information to put an end to these controversies.

Over the years, hunters have disputed the DNR’s management goals and deer population estimates, blaming the agency of overestimating the herd size leading to a general confusion regarding the truth.

A Texas deer researcher, James Kroll was hired by Governor Scott Walker to study the management strategies of the DNR. Therefore, he suggested to the agency in 2012 to create a monitoring program which will provide a sense of ownership to hunters and landowners.

Also in 2012, Townsend found out that NASA had the intention of funding a project that would make the connection between crowd-sourced data and the satellite imagery to improve the management of the landscape.

The cameras will take photos of many animals that roam around those areas. Then, these photos will be uploaded to Zooniverse, a crowd-sourcing website, where viewers have the opportunity to help scientists during the project.

Townsend’s team will build maps with the support of NASA to determine what environments the animals prefer and the way they move. Compared to the Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, which has only 225 cameras, the Snapshot Wisconsin will have more cameras, and they will cover a much larger area.

Until now, there are 560 cameras placed already in the woods, most of them in the Black River Falls and Clam Lake areas to establish elk movement. Hopefully, the trail cameras will pay off and lead to an improvement of our ecosystem.

Image Source:Chasingame

The Coyote Hunting in Wisconsin might be Banned

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coyote

The annual coyote hunting held in Wisconsin faced  backlash from some environmental groups.

The coyote hunting in Wisconsin might be banned. Every year a hunting contest is being held in the Forest County, but recently some environmental groups claimed that during the hunt, wolves are being killed as well.

The purpose of the hunt is to raise funds, but because of the negative claims, the event will be changed. According to Josh Bradley, who is a hunter, people will not be allowed to hunt turkey, deer or other animals rather than coyotes. Bradly said that these types of hunts help the deer population, as their main predators are killed.

The flyer of this year’s event stated that the winner of the hunting contest will be the person who will shoot the biggest coyote. Even though that is the opposite of what the protesters wanted, the hunting contest got more participants. Apparently, not only the negative publicity couldn’t stop the people from participating, but it encouraged them to do it.

Among the groups who protested against the hunt was Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf, which is group that fights for animal rights. Melissa Smith, who is the executive director of the environmental group said that not only could some wolves be harmed in the hunt, but that the coyote hunting is not the right thing to do. In the parts where the hunting takes place lives the Wisconsin great wolf, which is an endangered species and is protected by law. She also said that the little changes made in the contest are good, but that there are still a lot of better ways to do fundraising than to kill coyotes.

The coyotes are native to North America and are closely related to the grey wolves, but they are smaller, more basal animals. The coyotes have been compared to the golden jackals, but they are larger and more predatory. They can weigh up to 21 kg and they reach a height of 66 cm.

The Department of Natural Resources from Wisconsin allows the coyote hunting only once a year, but the number of coyotes killed is never tracked. A warden supervisor called David Walz said that hunting is the only method through which the coyotes can be controlled, mainly because they are very prolific animals. According to the Department of Natural Resources, the fine for a wolf that is killed is $4,000 and the hunting license of the hunter is also suspended for one year. As other species are endangered as well, the coyote hunting in Wisconsin might be banned.

Image Source: www.upload.wikimedia.org

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