This summer, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is celebrating two major milestones for its Snapshot Wisconsin project: the endeavor’s 10-year anniversary and the collection of 100 million photos. And the project recently received an “anniversary gift” – a new grant to CALS and DNR partners that will add technology and enhancements in data collection.

Snapshot Wisconsin, launched in 2015, is a DNR-led community-based science program – with strong CALS connections – that involves a statewide wildlife trail camera network. The cameras are hosted by Wisconsin landowners and photos are downloaded into a central database for classification by volunteers and data curation.

Initial funding came from a NASA community science pilot grant, which supported the installation of 500 cameras. The grant was written by Phil Townsend and Ben Zuckerberg, professors in the forest and wildlife ecology department, along with Dean of Extension Karl Martin, who was the DNR’s director of science services at the time. DNR employees Christine Anhalt-Depies and Jennifer Stenglein, both CALS grads, were also instrumental in getting Snapshot Wisconsin up and running.

Today the project has over 2,000 active trail cameras, 25,000 volunteers who contribute via photo classification, and is funded by the DNR through grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife Restoration Program. The data helps the DNR monitor wildlife populations and make management decisions. More than 20 scientific publications utilizing project data have been published, many by UW–Madison researchers, including former doctoral students.

Snapshot Wisconsin is gearing up for an exciting expansion, with a new 3-year NASA grant led by Ben Zuckerberg (PI), Zuzana Burivalova (co-PI), Phil Townsend (co-PI) and DNR colleagues that will enable the Snapshot Wisconsin team to deploy technologies to gather data about snow cover in the winter, “green up” in the spring, continuous temperature collection, as well as audio recording units to capture the sounds made by birds and other animals too small to trigger the existing cameras. These enhancements will enable a broader array of research and improved data-based management decisions to support conservation efforts across the state.

Check out Snapshot Wisconsin’s interactive photo collection, which features one trail camera image from each county in Wisconsin.