Camera Trap Survey Design and Data Management

• Start Date: November 11, 2026
• End Date: November 14, 2026
• Time: schedule varies, see below
• City: Revelstoke BC
• Instructor: Dr. Chris Beirne
• Registration open

Course Description

The number of projects employing camera traps to understand ecological phenomena is growing rapidly – as are the number of statistical tools to analyse the resultant data. Consequently, the management and analysis of camera trap data can seem complex and overwhelming. This course aims to guide participants in effective ways to store, manipulate and analyse camera trap data.

It will cover data storage and exploration best practises, introductions to the major methods used to analyse camera trap data, all using real world camera data. The course will give participants the tools to manage, analyse and share camera trap data in an approachable and practical way!

Course structure and objectives

This year, we’ve decided to split the course into two components. You can register for just day 1 of the course, or the whole thing.

Day 1. 9am-4pm

This part of the course is for all participants. We introduce the basics behind camera trap survey design and data management, then end the day using a no-code tool to explore camera data. Students are not required to have any R experience to take this portion of the course.

Objectives:

• Introduce camera trap data standards and formatting
• Explain basic pre-processing workflows using a no-code online app: the Camera Trap Exploration Tool
• Introduce common routines for checking the quality of camera data and dealing with commonly encountered errors in real world data
• Discuss the WildCAM initiative and other synthesis projects

Day 2, 9am-4pm.  Day 3, 9am-3pm

This segment of the course (day 2-3) will introduce the use of the R statistical environment to explore and analyse camera trap data and implement common analyses. Students taking this part of the course must already have a basic proficiency working in R and R Studio. (See more about prerequisite knowledge below.)

Objectives:

• Give participant hands-on experience in R using camera trap data to quantify
  • community composition
  • single species habitat-use
  • multi-species habitat-use
  • density
  • activity patterns
• Discuss when and where other analytical approaches not covered by the course may be appropriate (e.g. occupancy, behaviour, species distribution, and structural equation models) and provide resources for further study

Our instructor

Christopher Beirne has worked with camera traps for over a decade in North America, South America and Africa resulting in multiple scientific publications and technical reports. He has been using R on a near daily basis since 2011. He is currently a Director of Wildlife Programs at Osa Conservation, an affiliated researcher in the Wildlife Coexistance Lab at UBC and a member of Camera Trap Network for Western Canada (WildCAM).

For those of you who attended our popular conference, Scaling Up Camera Trap Surveys to Inform Regional Wildlife Conservation, you’ll remember Chris as the lead facilitator for the workshop on how to perform robust exploration and analysis in R with camera trap data. Chris is also well known in CMI circles for his popular CREDtalk (season 5), which we recommend you watch prior to this course.

 

Who should take this course?

This course will be of interest to undergraduates, graduates, wildlife professionals, regional biologists, and interested communities/organizations in camera trapping methods and analysis.

 

Prerequisites, preparation and what to bring

Day 1 of this course is open to anyone wanting to use camera traps! You will need a laptop to run the no-code section of the course.

Days 2 and 3 of this course are designed for students who are familiar with the basics of using R and R Studio. Experience with importing and exporting datasets, using “data frame” objects, and making basic plots (e.g. scatter plots and boxplots) will be beneficial. That said, all code will be provided and reproducible, so even students with minimal R experience will get a lot from the course!

Example camera trap data and course materials will be provided two weeks before the course start date.

Please come prepared to the course with:

• Laptop with the following programs installed
  • R: https://www.r-project.org/
  • R Studio Desktop: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/
• External monitor and mouse – not mandatory but you are welcome to bring these things. You’ll have enough space to set them up.
• If participant have their own data, they should format it into the Wildlife Insights metadata standard format.
• *Optional but highly recommended* Watch Chris’ previous seminar delivered in season 5 of CMI’s CREDtalks. You can find that here

What is included with this course?

• Instruction, course manual, and other course materials
• Reproducible code to use on your own projects
• Coffee breaks with snacks!
• Participants will have the option of purchasing bagged lunches upon registration. If they choose not to, we suggest you bring your own lunch in case there isn’t enough time to grab lunch in town

Registration

Day 1 Member: $187

Day 1 Non-Member: $210

Day 2-3 Member: $560

Day 2-3 Non-Member: $615

Bagged lunches $18/day, optional. Refreshments will be provided at the breaks as part of your registration fees. All food provided by La Baguette.

*Memberships may be purchased and renewed while you register. More about membership here.

 

REGISTER HERE

Limited class size, register immediately to secure your spot. We can’t always offer this course every year.

When the course fills, you can request to be placed on the cancellation list – anyone on this list will have the chance of filling registration cancellations as well as being the first to be notified when we open up registration for next season’s course. Please email office@cmiae.org to be placed on the wait list.

 

Where to stay?

Basecamp Revelstoke: various locations and discounted room rates available to CMI registrants.

• Discount code of 15% via the online booking tool using the promo code “CMI”
• Basecamp Resort: Just outside of town towards Revelstoke dam. River-side rooms have great views. About a 10min drive to the classroom venue
• Basecamp Suites: A new build downtown Revelstoke
• Northwinds Hotel: A recently acquired hotel in the Farwell area of town, easy walk to the downtown area.

Our event partners

A big thanks to the WildCAM Network for all the work they do and for supporting this course.