With October now complete, we are excited to look back on the first month of Sky Island FotoFauna, a wildlife monitoring network powered by many organizations and individuals that call the Sky Islands their home. We are thrilled at the turnout of the first month—a big thanks to everyone who jumped on FotoFauna right as it launched and helped the network grow so quickly!
Reminder: You can now submit a FotoFauna checklist for each remote camera that recorded wildlife data between October 1 and October 31. Learn more about how to participate HERE.
FotoFauna is a collaborative effort that allows organizations and residents of the Sky Island region to share their remote camera detection data. Through analysis of this data, Sky Island Alliance and many other organizations will be able to track the movement of 28 regional species to better understand their behaviors, migratory patterns, adaptation to development and other landscape changes, and more.
October 2020 FotoFauna Stats
The first 30 days of FotoFauna were a huge success with many yet to come. As we look forward to expanding this community, detecting more species, and analyzing more data, we wanted to share a few exciting stats from the month of October:
- Partners and individuals submitted 24 checklists (with more still coming in).
These checklists contained only the recorded wildlife data that was detected between October 1 and 31.
- A total of 23 species were observed across these checklists.
This includes skunk species, deer species, mountain lion, coyote, white-nosed coati, and javelina.
- Our FotoFauna community now includes 16 organizations from across Arizona and Northern Mexico!
So far, the partners on this project are Arizona Center for Nature Conservation/Phoenix Zoo, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Arizona Trail Association, Borderlands Restoration Network, Caminantes del Desierto, Coronado National Memorial, Pollinator Corridors Southwest, Profauna, Rancho El Aribabi, Saguaro National Park, Sky Island Alliance, The Nature Conservancy Arizona, Tohono Chul, Universidad de la Sierra, Watershed Management Group, and Wildlands Network.
We are incredibly excited to have the unique opportunity to collaborate with these groups and are always looking to add more! Know of an organization who might be interested in joining FotoFauna? Email Program Director Emily Burns at [email protected] with the details.
- While most species were correctly identified, there were some tricky ones.
The top misidentified species in the submitted October FotoFauna checklists included the elf owl and the hog-nosed skunk.
- A total of 91 pre-October checklists were submitted last month.
These checklists contained remote camera data recorded during previous months. If you have data from a previous month (that isn’t October 2020), we want to see it! Please submit a separate checklist for each month in which you’ve recorded data on a remote or backyard wildlife camera.
Help build a network of cameras and track the movement of wildlife. Join FotoFauna today.
Don’t Miss Our Photo Contest!
Join the FotoFauna community virtually on December 17, 2020 to see many of the beautiful wildlife photos contributed to FotoFauna in 2020 by volunteers and partners across the region!
During this virtual Coffee Break, you will cast votes for the best photos of the year. Help us select the winning photographs and wrap up 2020 with a celebration of our incredible Sky Island wildlife.
Register to save your spot at the December 17 Coffee Break >