Snapshot Wisconsin hits 100 million photos, marks 10th anniversary

MADISON – A statewide wildlife monitoring program has collected 100 million photographs and reached its 10th anniversary, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources announced this week.
Snapshot Wisconsin uses volunteer-managed trail cameras across all 72 counties to monitor wildlife populations. The community science program launched in 2015 with initial funding from a NASA grant awarded to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013.
The program now operates more than 2,000 active trail cameras statewide. Volunteers help classify animal species in photographs through Zooniverse, an online crowdsourcing platform.
Data from the project has contributed to 20 scientific publications and helps inform DNR wildlife management decisions, according to the announcement.
The program began with several hundred cameras placed in elk reintroduction areas before expanding to pilot programs in Sawyer and Iowa counties in 2016.

Snapshot Wisconsin has attracted 25,000 volunteers who help identify species in the photographs. The program offers several public resources, including an interactive data dashboard showing information for 22 Wisconsin species and educational materials for K-12 classrooms.
The DNR has created an interactive photo collection featuring one trail camera image from each Wisconsin county to mark the milestones.
Anyone can participate in the species classification effort by visiting the Snapshot Wisconsin page on the Zooniverse website.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.