MemoWeb started as a collaboration between us here at Durham University and the folks
at the Durham Wildlife Trust about how even though we know about what kinds of wildlife
there are in Britain, we know surprisingly little about their actual ecology.
MemoWeb is a citizen science project and it involves loaning out remote capture trail
cameras to members of the public to put out either in their gardens or in a piece of woodland
near them or in the countryside near them where it can capture wild mammals as they're moving
naturally through the environment and that's the important thing, it's their natural behaviour
we're trying to capture. These mammals are not only important for conservation, they're also very
important culturally and economically so there is a good reason for us to learn more about them
but it takes a lot of work to set up a lot of these cameras in many places to do this monitoring.
That's how we thought of turning this into a citizen science project
where we involve the local community in monitoring the wildlife here.
From the pictures that we get from these cameras we'll be able to tell things like the time of
day that each species is most active, whether the species interact with each other, what time of year
they breed, what parts of the area certain species appear in and what parts they don't appear in
so all that kind of information that we really just don't have on our mammals we can get from
these cameras which is really important. We started by organising and getting a lot of the
doing wildlife traps membership involved but also outside of that so we have about 60 or so
citizen scientists from the community setting up these camera traps for us. Penn walked me through
the basics of the operation, you get your batteries, you get an SD card, you stick them in the camera
and you put the camera up somewhere where you hope it's not going to get nicked but it'll get some
pictures of wildlife and it's by trial and error that I've learnt and by talking to other members
of the project and that's always always been extremely helpful and interesting and seeing
what pictures they produce on the site. I'm very envious of some of the pictures of autos and hairs
and things that other people manage to produce. This citizen science project is more than just
regular people or citizens collecting data for scientists but it's also an opportunity about
how taking part in this science can help all of us be better citizens so that we become more
aware and connected to the nature around us to better paint that bigger picture of how all of
these pieces fit into the wider ecosystem and how that ecosystem provides all of its important
services for us. So I talked to the British Ecological Society who very generously provided us
with support to work with the local schools near Durham and getting students involved in the process.
I went to my school science club and that's, I first met Penn from Dumby University who came
and explained what Mama Webb wants to me and why I should do it and it was really quite interesting
so I kept coming back and it not very long I was out setting camera traps. Three weeks ago we came
here to rent meadows and we had our camera traps with us and we put it up on one of the trees and
our aim was to try and catch as much wildlife as we could. We chose this location because it's quite
open and but the camera's also quite low to the ground. There is any large trees with branches
or foliage that are blocking the camera so it should be able to get a good view. It's got an
infrared sensor in it that detects any motion in front of the camera. When it detects motion it's
set off the camera which takes a few falls then after a few seconds it resets. We're expressing
the catch quite a few animals like weasels, otters, rabbits, foxes. By setting traps we can see how
they like exist in their habitats, what they eat and kind of how often they pass by which will give
us an idea of like population size specific individuals and also because of that future
generations of their studying kind of ecology and the way different ecosystems work it means they
can build off what we've already found out and hopefully learn even more about different species
and how they evolved to be as they are today in Britain. So after three weeks we come back
we check to see first of all if there's any signs of animals just to get a hint what we might be
seeing when we check the camera so then when we undo the bike off and take the trap off we can
then go upload the data onto a computer and view the images that we've captured and hopefully there'll
be a few good findings. We also need people to log on to the website which is www.mammalweb.org
and register as spotters. Now what a spotter does is they look at all these pictures that have been
taken by the cameras and they identify the animals that are in them and it's really important that
they do that because if we don't have that public involvement that citizen science involvement in
classifying all these images then basically they'll just sit there and they won't do anything
so we really need lots of people's help. With all of the data the 150,000 photos that the citizen
scientists in Mammalweb has provided and all of the classifications and data processing they've
done as part of this project we are able to start looking at the spatial and temporal ecological
patterns of all of the wild mammals that we've been observing. As a result of this we are starting
to see some concrete results that can inform management and policy. We have had one exotic
and invasive species we had a raccoon in Sunderland which was almost certainly either an escaped or
a dumped pet but it was living in the wild in Sunderland and in the end the government animal
health department came and captured it and relocated it to Jungle Zoo in Tethlops. With all of this
data we are able to get a better fundamental understanding of the ecology of the wildlife
here so that we can start to learn about the connection they have with us to better paint
that bigger picture of how all of these pieces fit into the wider ecosystem and how that ecosystem
provides all of its important services for us. It's a really good opportunity and that would
something we've never been able to do before and probably won't have a chance to do again and I
just find it really interesting to see how animals live in the natural habitat without human
interference. I really like the idea of being able to help out figuring out what kind of animals
live in our areas. We got to see animals close up and it was a good way of learning outside of
classroom environment. I find it really interesting the size of how the camera works and then also
be able to look at so many different animals and find out new things about them and look at their
behavior and things that we wouldn't have otherwise seen without the cameras and it's really quite
it's really quite fascinating so we keep going out and doing more of this and it's really good fun
as well. I just think it's good for the environment I mean I love the environment that I live in and
I love animals so I think by doing mammal web I'm helping both the area that I live in and the
animals that live in the area that I live in as well. I'm interested in the science of ecology
and why animals live in certain places and how populations increase and decrease. I also want
to help the animals in this area because it's not exactly where I live but it's close to where I live
and I want to make sure that the animals are still thriving for future generations.
For anyone who's interested in participating in citizen science I would encourage you to
check out our website at mammalweb.org get in touch with us about how you would like to get involved
you don't have to be from during you can be from anywhere and if you're interested in citizen
science in general there are a lot of other projects going on so definitely look for those
too whether that's on sitside.org or zooniverse.org there are a lot of options out there for you
to explore so I will highly encourage anyone to participate in a citizen science project.
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