Capturing Wildlife with Game Cameras on the South Arkansas River

By Nathan Ward, Upper Arkansas Watershed Partnership Coordinator

Once the sun starts to set, many animals venture from their dens or leave their daytime hiding places to hunt, eat, play, mate and do all the other things animals do when humans aren’t looking. It’s a fascinating world, but one we rarely see because, one, we are not usually hiding in the woods at night. And two, even if we were out there in the dark, human eyes can’t see much at night. It’s a conundrum, but we do have a way to capture snippets of the night lives of animals - game cameras.

Central Colorado Conservancy, as part of the Upper Arkansas Watershed Partnership, recently received five new game cameras from the National Park Service - Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance (RTCA) program. The plan is to place the cameras at strategic locations throughout the South Arkansas River - 1.2 Mile Reach project to capture images of the animals using this vital riparian wildlife corridor. The cameras are triggered by motion and can capture images both during the day and during the darkest nights. 

With a single game camera placed on a stretch of the South Ark a few miles upstream, Nathan Ward captured images of bears, mountain lions, skunks, turkeys, raccoons, squirrels, a muskrat, mice, the neighbor’s dog, and about a thousand deer photos. (Closer observation showed these were actually the same few deer walking back and forth each day in front of the camera, not a herd of 1,000 deer, although it seemed like it at times.) 

Camera placement is crucial. For example, place the camera in a spot where the frequent breezes blow a single strand of grass or a branch back and forth and you’ll end up with hundreds of photos of nothing. You’ll be left searching the edges of the photos for an elusive animal, but finally realize it was just the wind. 

The cameras will need to be monitored, the memory cards downloaded, and the images reviewed one by one to find the best images. We’d love to find some somewhat technically-minded volunteers to help us set up the cameras, monitor the sites, and download the images on a regular basis. If this type of opportunity interests you, please email Nathan Ward at nathan@centralcoloradoconservancy.org.