2021. Bobcats in Your Backyard!
December 13, 2021
Open gallery
A night-vision photo of a walking bobcat captured by a trail camera in the Alumni Woods on October 19, 2021 at 12:09 AM.
Used trail cams to see how species react to humans. There were more species in remote areas but raccoons and squirrels didnt mind the humans!
by Elsa Hata
We set up trail cameras in disturbed, average, and remote areas to gauge how different species would respond. Two cameras were placed in each site; one for an area with more human disturbance, and one with less. After looking at all the photos taken (including a lot of photos of people noticing the cameras), we found that the remote areas of all three sites could support more species than the disturbed locations. We also noticed that species abundance was greater in remote locations as well, due to the high amounts of human activity in the other locations. One of our most notable findings was that raccoons don’t really seem to mind human disturbance nearly as much as the other species. They were abundant in almost every single location, and actually seemed to benefit from being close to human activity (great access to trash!)