Two hundred thirty new camera traps will be incorporated into wildlife monitoring in the country's protected areas, after the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service and the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF) agreed on a loan agreement that will allow these devices to be placed at the service of conservation.
The cameras were acquired by the Service this year and represent an investment of more than $45 million. Through the agreement, they will be temporarily transferred to CONAF and allocated exclusively to the National Wildlife Photo-Monitoring Program and its threats, while the Corporation continues to administer the protected areas that will later be integrated into the Service and the National System of Protected Areas (SINAP).
The decision seeks for the new equipment to begin generating information from now on and, at the same time, to ensure the continuity of one of the main wildlife monitoring programs currently being developed in the State's protected areas.
Along these lines, CONAF's executive director, Aída Baldini Urrutia, highlighted that camera traps "began to be used in 2011 in an isolated manner in some protected areas with the support of NGOs and national researchers associated with independent projects. But by 2016, Photo-Monitoring began with a standardized methodology applicable to all the country's units, as a unified program focused on large mammals as conservation objects and their threats. Thus, we already have 1,000 cameras, which are installed for specific periods at 2,000 sampling points established in 35 protected areas in the country. This work is wonderful, because it allows us to learn about our wildlife in its natural environment, without interfering with their behaviors, and to generate evidence to make better conservation decisions. This is key to addressing the main threats currently affecting our biodiversity, such as the impact of dogs under irresponsible ownership and the presence of feral exotic animals, for example, wild boar and mink, whose actions put our native species at risk."
Tomás Saratscheff, national director of the Service, valued this collaboration: "These 230 camera traps are a concrete contribution to conservation and to knowledge of the wildlife that inhabits our protected areas. By making them available to CONAF, we give continuity to the National Photo-Monitoring Program and move forward in a coordinated manner in this institutional process, also recognizing the experience and professional capacities that CONAF has built over the years in this area."
A monitoring network from the 16 regions
The National Photo-Monitoring Program, led by CONAF, operates through camera trap stations installed under a standardized sampling design. It currently covers 35 protected areas distributed across the country's 16 regions and includes annual campaigns carried out by park rangers and regional technical teams.
The cameras make it possible to obtain periodic, comparable, and georeferenced records on the presence, distribution, and detection frequency of terrestrial vertebrates, with special attention to species that are in conservation categories.
The system also makes it possible to detect invasive exotic fauna and record unauthorized human activities inside protected areas, which will generate background information that can be used to guide management decisions, evaluate the effectiveness of conservation measures, and build indicators on the state of biodiversity.
The records obtained are processed and centralized in an institutional photo-monitoring platform, making it possible to maintain the traceability of a data series that has been developed continuously since 2017.
Technology to know and protect wildlife
The 230 units correspond to new camera traps, and together with the 1,000 that CONAF already owns, they have technology that allows wildlife to be recorded remotely and with minimal intervention on the animals, including species with nocturnal habits or that are difficult to observe directly.
The agreement is also part of the joint work carried out by both institutions to prepare the integration of protected areas into the Service.
In this period, keeping monitoring systems operating is especially relevant, since it makes it possible to preserve historical series of information, avoid interruptions in data collection, and ensure that the knowledge accumulated by CONAF, its park rangers, and technical teams remains available for the future management of SINAP.
Thus, the new equipment will expand the capacity to observe wildlife, but it will also allow the institutional transition process to maintain knowledge of the species that inhabit protected areas, how they use these territories, and what threats they are facing, a line of work that is fundamental for conservation.
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