Many organizations have their own collaborative camera trapping programs tailored to their specific needs and have produced guidelines, protocols, and recommendations for setting up cameras for wildlife studies. These are a great source of information to draw from when designing your own project. Below are some examples of useful resources and protocols. If you have any suggestions for resources you'd like us to post, please let us know info@wildcams.ca.
Metadata Standards
Alberta Remote Camera Metadata Standards (2022)
RISC Wildlife Camera Metadata Protocol- standards used by the government of British Columbia adapted from Forrester et al.'s 2016 paper of Camera Trap Metadata Standards (CTMS; which has now become the global standard). We recommend the use of either of those standards and include some additional resources below.
Wildlife Insights metadata standards
Camera trap Deployment
Wildlife Camera Trap Field Set-up (2-page infographic), BC's Together for Wildlife
A Guide to Using Wildife Cameras for Ecological Monitoring in a Community-based Context (42 pp), a user-friendly guide that aims to describe what wildlife cameras are, how they can be used to support community led monitoring, determine if they are a good fit for different monitoring goals and resources, and ultimately to help the reader create a community monitoring program using wildlife cameras.
The Wildlife Conservation Society's Jaguar Survey Protocols
The TEAM Network's Camera Trap Sampling Protocol
Conservation Northwest's Remote Camera Trap Installation and Servicing Protocol
eMammal's Camera Trapping Recommendations and Resources
The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute's Camera Trap Protocol
Royal Geographical Society Expedition Field Techniques- Camera trapping (2014)
Other Camera Trap Networks
Wildlife Camera Network Northwest is another camera network in western North America that is a repository of expertise for the science of camera trapping.
TEAM - global camera trapping network which is also organization behind the upcoming Wildlife Insights photo tagging software.
Snapshot USA- a coordinated sampling network in the United States