Educational Trail Camera Project

Photography for Big Cats CIC will start an Educational Trail Camera Project with schools in Nottinghamshire from September 2017 onwards. Although we had initially raised awareness and funds solely for endangered big cat species, we started to explore the British wildlife with trail cameras in the wider Sherwood Forest area 3 years ago.

We are taking our project now a step further and will get children involved in our trail camera work in natural habitat areas within our surroundings. The Educational Trail Camera Project has the objective to raise the children's interest in wildlife and to learn about the different species that can be found in country parks, nature reserves and other natural habitat areas in our neighbourhood.

The children will

• Explore surrounding natural habitat areas for signs of wildlife activity and set up trail cameras,
• Evaluate what the camera(s) recorded and learn about species, their behaviour and our impact on wildlife,
• Produce a short educational film about a wildlife species, about their experience in studying wildife or about issues for wildlife and what could be done to eliminate or at least mitigate these.

Two schools will start to work with us from September onwards; Holy Trinity Catholic Primary and Nursery School (Newark) and the Candleby Lane School (Cotgrave).

For the one year project with these 2 schools, we will need a total of £4,000, which will be used for

• Buying trail cameras and accessories including security locks and batteries - £1,250
• Buying film/photography cameras (for the children to record their own research work) - £300
• Buying binoculars - £150
• Buying other accessories including card readers, stationery for documenting observations and anti-bacterial cleaning material - £150
• Paying for teaching resources, experienced in wildlife and trail camera surveys - £2,150

We are hoping to be able to gain half of the funding through our crowd funding campaign. We have already raised £300 through collections at talks about our trail camera work in Sherwood Forest, and one school will buy their own trail cameras as they would like to keep them beyond the project. Furthermore, we will apply for funding through grant schemes and from local businesses, and we hope to gain also the support of suppliers (getting discounts).

Photography for Big Cats CIC is a registered community interest company, which was founded by wildlife photographer Barbara Meyer with the aim to help endangered big cats like tigers and Amur leopards through photography. Based on the recognition that many problems for big cats apply also to wildlife here in Britain (habitat loss, poaching, etc), Barbara ask the rangers of the Sherwood Forest Country Park to gain permission to set up a trail camera in Nottinghamshire's only National Nature Reserve in October 2014. This developed soon into a more extended wildlife survey beyond the country park part of Sherwood Forest and developed into our mission to raise more awareness for the wildlife that lives around us. In this sense, we have started to reach out to schools and are now commencing the Educational Trail Camera Project.

We hope very much to gain your support for our this project!