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Doe and fawn…

atest press release from ReWild Wicklow, issued on Wednesday, August 21st 2024…

To celebrate National Heritage Week local environmental charity ReWild Wicklow have just published the report on their camera trap initiative across east Wicklow in 2023.

The annual initiative is part of a wider project called ‘Snapshot Europe’ and the goal is to collect systematic wildlife camera trap data on mammals across as many study sites in Europe as possible during September and October each year. The initiative is the largest systemic camera trap project in all of Ireland and it’s completely run by volunteers.

In 2023 the group successfully monitored 47 sites, collected 183,297 photographs and captured 11 wild mammal species and a variety of birds.

“We’re very excited with the results and to have caught such a wide breadth of mammals on camera this year,” said ReWild Wicklow chairperson and report co-author Danny Alvey. “Every autumn over 20 volunteers take part in setting up the cameras in and around woodlands near Glendalough, Laragh, Annamoe, Roundwood, Ashford, Newtown and nearly as far south as Rathdrum. We then return regularly to check on them and swap the memory cards. Then we upload all the images we find to a platform called Wildlife Insights and its over to our research team to tag and analyse them all.

“The initiative was started in Ireland in 2021 by PhD student Adam F. Smith and he is still the lead on the project each year. Adam and a group of students from UCD’s department of wildlife volunteer hours and hours of their own time to produce this analysis and final report – the result is the largest camera trap report in the country.”

This year Sika deer were once again, by far, the most common species detected, making up 72% (4,526) of all independent events of wild mammals. The next most common species was red squirrel at 11% (689) of events and red fox with 10% (601). The charismatic pine marten are also continuing their strong recovery in the county, accounting for 57 events at 21 sites (45% of all sites monitored). New wild mammals recorded compared to 2022 were fallow deer and the eastern grey squirrel.

“We’d like to thank Adam for all his work on this project, as well as staff from NPWS and Coillte for their assistance on accessing locations,” said Danny.

“2023 also saw two new Irish additions to Snapshot Europe in Galway and Mayo, which were directly inspired by the work we conducted, and we hope to continue to assist more projects to use these methods to collect wildlife data around the country. The data collected here in Wicklow will hopefully help guide decisions around enhancing protection and habitat for the wonderful array of mammals we still have left in this county. We’re just about to head back out with our cameras to set up the fourth year of this initiative at the end of August and I’m looking forward to what we find this year.”

Equipment for this project was funded in part from grants received from the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Local Authority Waters Programme and also from business and individual donors sponsoring cameras.

The full report can be read on the ReWild Wicklow website right here.