The Boyagin Brigade (that's us, Sean Van Alphen and Paul Sellers), have been doing Numbat Drive Surveys in Boyagin Nature Reserve for the last 3 years. Drive Surveys involve driving around the tracks at 10 kilometres per hour for up to 10 hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of   Numbats going about their business, then observing their behaviour and photographing them. 

About 10 months ago we noticed a drop in our Numbat sightings and an increase in feral animal sightings and tracks. This worrying trend resulted in us contacting the Deprtment of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) and obtaining authority to set up some transects of remote sensor cameras in the reserve so that we could get data on what was occurring when we weren't in the reserve.  We bought 8 budget low quality Boblov and 2 better quality Bushnell Remote Sensor Cameras and deployed some of the cameras in areas where we had recently seen Numbats. When we checked the cameras after 2 weeks, the first animal we captured footage of was a Red Fox. Since that first deployment we have collected over 1,000 clips of animals, including footage of  the following natives; Numbats, Woylies, Chuditch, Red-tailed Phascogales, Common Brush-tailed Possums, Gilbert's Dunnarts, Short-beaked Echidnas, Quenda, Western-brush Wallabies and Western Grey Kangaroos. We have also caught Red Foxes, Feral Cats and Rabbits on the camera traps. 

We are thrilled that our sensor camera project is working well and giving us some excellent information on the mammals of Boyagin Nature Reserve. Although we have some quality footage from our budget sensor cameras, the long shutter lag means we miss some animals if they cross the field of view at speed,  also the lack of sensitivity control on these cameras,  means that moving vegetation sometimes triggers the cameras, and we end up with fresh air shots.. 

Whilst we have established that our system is working successfully, we need all you Numbat lovers that follow us and enjoy our post to please donate to our Pozible Crowdfunding Campaign for the Boyagin Numbat Sensor Camera Survey, so that we can purchase some more cameras ( DBCA have increased the number of cameras we can deploy from 12 to 40 cameras ) and ensure we have more higher resolution cameras. Please donate so that we can find out more about the secret lives of the Boyagin Numbats. We have organised some rewards for you if you donate, ranging from Numbat Bookmarks, Numbat A4  Photos, Numbat Biscuits, the chance to Name Our Numbats and the opportunity to join the Boyagin Brigade on one of our Numbat Drive Surveys. For further information about the rewards (including the choice of Numbat Bookmarks and Pictures - check them out here). 

Our target is $3,000 dollars which will be enough to buy approximately 5  x economy (5 x $100) cameras (which are ideal for monitoring sites of interest, and establishing if any target animals are in the area), 4 x mid range cameras (4x$250) with faster trigger times and sensitivity controls (to minimise false triggering) (which can be deployed when we've established the presence of animals of interest, for higher resolution footage) and 3 higher quality cameras (3 x $500) with solar panels for powering the cameras independent of  batteries (which will be ideal for extended coverage of sites we don't want to disturb). This will increase the total number of our cameras to 22, and give us much more flexibility in terms of areas we can monitor.

The only potential challenges we can see for the increased number of cameras that we will be deploying, is the increase in the time taken to upload the files from the SD cards to our laptop, and the increasing time required to check all the footage we collect. We may have to make dedicated trips to Boyagin Nature Reserve, just to upload the data and re-deploy the cameras, instead of combining the data collection and re-deployment of the sensor cameras with our normal drive survey, as we have been doing. We could swap out the SD cards on the cameras, so that we will be able to upload all our data at home, rather than eat into our survey time by uploading data in the field.