Currently we are quite busy with tourism and our forest school project, but of course also our regular monitoring activities are ongoing. We checked all camera traps last week and we had the first picture of a Coati in there for a long time.
Now, here's the complication. We bought a lot of camera traps of different models over the last two years and it seems that the respective model has quite a impact on detection of wild life.
After many months of not seeing a lot of mammals at a spot that used to be one of the most reliable ones in terms of diversity we swapped the camera there to a pricier brand / model - et voilà - immediately we have seen a couple of species (including birds, so smaller species that are less likely to be detected) that didn't seem to be around for a long time.
So between January and June there were basically only pictures of Pumas, Andean Bears, Tayras and human beings at this spot and in one month with the new camera we've seen Ocelots, Coatis (the first in many years!), Opossums, Oncillas, (the inevitable) Quail-Dove and Antpittas.
Now, this of course makes us scratch our heads a little. Should we rather go for better cameras and less monitoring sites or keep up the strategy of using varying models and camera qualities in order to be able to have a denser monitoring network in Santa Lucía?
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