Snapshot NY, a citizen science program created by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Cornell University in 2025, will begin Year Two in July. The innovative program, which enables the public to participate in the state’s efforts to monitor wildlife by deploying privately-owned trail cameras, has already enlisted more than 800 volunteers.
“As soon as the program was launched, it took off; immediately, we saw a steep increase in participation,” said Joelee Tooley, a Cornell researcher and the coordinator of Snapshot NY.
According to Tooley, the program is, at least in part, a response to the limitations of the DEC’s traditional methods of quantifying wildlife populations.
“Historically, the DEC has relied upon data from species hunted or trapped. And while harvest reports are important, the sampling is uneven: hunters can change their habits, based on the year or even the price of gas,” said Tooley.
And, Tooley added, “Sightings of rare or elusive species are too random to provide population-scale estimates.”
Even when using more efficient methods of monitoring a species, such as camera trapping, live trapping, collaring and radio tracking, estimating the size of a wildlife population is expensive, time consuming, labor intensive and dependent upon too few DEC wildlife biologists and technicians, said Tooley.
“To measure changes in animal abundance over a five-year period, you would need data from thousands of sites,” said Tooley. “With its limited number of employees, it’s unlikely that the DEC would be able to collect, manage and analyze that volume of data.”
Dr. Angela Fuller, who leads the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Cornell, commented, “Snapshot NY represents an unprecedented opportunity to generate large-scale, long-term data on wildlife populations across New York.”
According to the DEC, the project also addresses a deficit in wildlife data from privately-owned lands.
“More than 60 percent of land in New York is privately owned, so Snapshot NY helps DEC biologists collect critical information about wildlife in many areas where our experts have historically lacked access,” DEC Commissioner Amanda Lefton stated.
The DEC expects the additional data will help improve the way DEC monitors and manages more than a dozen wildlife species – bear, bobcat, deer, fisher, turkey, marten and moose, among them, officials stated.
The contributions of Snapshot NY’s citizen scientists “will help DEC continue to make informed decisions, improve the effectiveness of wildlife conservation and management strategies and track changes in wildlife populations over time,” the DEC stated.
According to Tooley, more than 6.1 million trail camera images – from both the DEC and citizen scientists – have been uploaded to Snapshot NY’s website thus far. Twenty- two species – not including small rodents and songbirds – have been identified. Not surprisingly, squirrels and racoons appear most frequently.
Thus far, Snapshot NY is “an awesome success. The DEC is very pleased,” said Tooley.
For information about Snapshot NY, to learn how to participate and to register as a volunteer, visit snapshotny.org./get-involved.
As Tooley explained at the Adirondack Research Consortium’s annual conference at Lake Placid on April 15, the program’s population ecology researchers are using uploads from the trail cams and employing detection/non-detection metrics to determine prioritized species’ abundance and density.
“We can use these metrics in real-life management applications. We can not only map the distribution of species across New York State, we can develop management plans for specific species and their habitats,” said Tooley.
According to DEC Commissioner Amanda Lefton, Snapshot NY is not only a way for volunteers to contribute to New York’s wildlife conservation efforts; it represents “a fantastic opportunity to get outside and connect with the outdoors.”
Or simply to observe nature from an angle rarely available from a lawn or porch.
“I videotaped a woodland jumping mouse, jumping three feet into the air and landing on top of a snowshoe hare, who then jumped three feet into the air himself,” Mark Patterson, a resident of Pottersville, commented at the ARC conference in April.
“That video has already gone viral,” said Joley Tooley.
