Snapshot blog

Every day is different as an intern at De Hoge Veluwe National Park – from research, meetings, fieldwork, building fences to writing blog posts and mind mapping. A few days ago, I was lucky enough to go out into the field with Frank who has been working at the Park for more than ten years now. Originally a “green man” working towards the maintenance of the Park, he then came to realise his childhood dream of becoming a game keeper. His task is twofold: not only does Frank manage the wildlife by monitoring food and water supplies for the game for population number for example, but he also makes sure that the behaviour of the visitors is not impacting the wildlife negatively.

Since May 2018, De Hoge Veluwe National Park has been involving the general public in its scientific research through the online platform “Snapshot Hoge Veluwe”. Our project is inscribed in a wider and innovative social movement of Online Citizen Science which is challenging the traditional boundaries of scientific research.

Winter is nearly over and spring is in the air – for nature as well as for some of our favourite species to spot on Snapshot, this time of year symbolises the beginning of new life. Indeed, fresh additions are about to be brought into the current mouflon and wild boar populations as sows and ewes are coming to the end of their gestation periods.

Question: "Do you notice a difference in the Snapshot pictures after coming to check the cameras? Do the animals become shyer after recent visits from humans? I am curious about that.”

Snapshot Hoge Veluwe has collected an impressive number of classifications since the launch, thanks to the efforts of thousands of dedicated volunteers. From these classifications we have found that the results stabilise after a certain number of volunteers have given their opinion.

Everybody who has done a few series at Snapshot Hoge Veluwe, must have seen them. Series of pictures without wildlife. We can only see some waving trees and grasses. Normally these empty shots are not so common when classifying images. But recently these empty series have been occurring more often. We are happy to explain you why.

Spotting wildlife at Snapshot Hoge Veluwe is fun for many of us. The majority of images are of large herbivores like red deer and wild boar. Of course we focus on these animals since most of our research questions revolve around them. But we also spot other animals, like birds for example. In this blog we want to give these animals some attention as well.