Where the Wild Things Are: Conservation Northwest’s Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project

By Aleah Jaeger, Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project Coordinator

Here at Conservation Northwest, we’re proud of our Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project (CWMP). With more than 100 volunteers and 50 remote camera sites deployed each year in Washington and British Columbia, our Project is one of the largest citizen-science wildlife monitoring efforts of it’s kind in North America.

We’re always looking for new ways to talk about our wildlife monitoring efforts, so imagine our excitement when our CWMP intern, Taylor McDowell, came to us with an idea to create a story map about the project. What followed was:

Where the Wild Things Are: Conservation Northwest’s Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project

This story map, created through ArcGIS, combines maps, videos, photos, and background information to create an interactive piece on the stellar work that our volunteers and staff do to document wildlife in our region.

Now in its 10th year, CWMP has achieved amazing results informing wildlife science and conservation in Washington and British Columbia. We’ve documented rare species like wolverines and Canada lynx, and our data helps inform state agencies as they make decision surrounding wildlife.

This project would be impossible without our amazing volunteers. We’d also like to extend a special thank you to Taylor for his excellent work, both on this story map and for helping to run our monitoring project over the last six months! 

Many thanks to our project partners, including Wilderness Awareness School and state and federal agencies, as well as our generous funders, including the Spokane Mountaineers, Sustainable Path and WDFW’s ALEA grants program. Thanks too to those who’ve adopted a team!

Want to help make our monitoring program a success? Adopt a camera team today.