The Faculty of Environmental Protection will participate in a major international project entitled “Developing data management and analytical tools to integrate and advance professional and citizen science camera-trapping initiatives across Europe” in the period 2024-2027.
The three-year project, under the acronym BIG_PICTURE, will involve a wide range of European wildlife ecology experts from ten countries, including researchers from Norway, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Poland, in addition to Slovenia.
Access to a large body of reliable and standardised wildlife data over large spatial and temporal scales is one of the key prerequisites for understanding animal behavioural patterns and how they change over time, and thus for preventing biodiversity loss. Effective and accurate integration of (already) collected data allows for the assessment of trends, understanding of influencing factors, rapid response to emerging threats and evaluation of the effectiveness of management actions. However, there are still many obstacles to the use of the collected data. The project aims to identify and address, also in collaboration with amateur scientists, the legal, institutional, social, technical and practical barriers to obtaining, processing, organising, sharing and analysing the large amounts of data from photo-traps (cameras designed to record wildlife) that are collected every day in many locations across Europe.
