Camera trapping for large scale monitoring

Over the past three decades, camera trapping has rapidly evolved into a central tool for wildlife monitoring and ecological research. Camera-trap data are nowadays widely used to quantify population-level metrics such as species occurrence, abundance, activity patterns, behavior, and reproduction, as well as community-level properties including species richness and composition. Beyond research applications, camera trapping holds growing potential for biodiversity conservation, notably by helping to address taxonomic, spatial, and temporal gaps in public biodiversity repositories such as GBIF. By capturing additional species, extending sampling durations, and documenting previously unsampled portions of species’ ranges, camera-trap data can substantially enhance biodiversity reporting. Camera trapping is now ready to enter the era of continental-scale monitoring and support biodiversity conservation and reporting at national and international levels. While this vision was articulated nearly a decade ago, only recently have the key technical and organizational foundations been established, though further steps are still required to fully realize the potential of camera-trap data. In this talk, I will present some of my recent work on overcoming these limitations to advance camera trapping for large scale monitoring.