By Sarah LaBrasca | Project Leader
MammalWeb was set up by Durham University and Durham Wildlife Trust to address the gap in mammal research. Compared to birds and butterflies, the mammals of Britain are understudied, due to their often nocturnal and shy nature. This is despite mammals being of huge importance culturally, economically and ecologically. You only have to look at the uproar generated over fox hunts and badger culls to know that people in the UK care deeply for our mammals. MammalWeb taps into the power of the citizen and enables ordinary people to get involved in mammal research, research that helps make effective conservation decisions.
The existing platform collates photographs taken by the camera traps, set up by citizen volunteers, which they can then classify by species. This has built up a picture of what species could be found where in north-east England. Over 45,000 photos have been classified by 130 users.
The next stage will see MammalWeb transform into a world-leading, fully interactive citizen science platform, with a modular format allowing it to be applied to many other projects in the UK and overseas. We have completed our preliminary work in developing the operational strategy for MammelWeb and identified a partner development organisation to do the technical work. The onus is now on the lead organisation, Durham University, to agree the arrangements for future collaboration.
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