Final Update from Vancouver Cat Count
Summer monitoring of cats in Vancouver has been completed!
From July to September 2020, Jaylen Bastos, Vancouver Cat Count researcher, has taken around a million of photos with trail cameras to collect information about outdoor cats in the city.
With generous help and support from residents, business owners, not-for-profit organizations and Vancouver Park Board, Jaylen conducted 4 sessions of camera monitoring across 87 locations in the City of Vancouver. Typically, wildlife research that uses camera traps should aim for a minimum of 40 locations to best help a computer program estimate cat populations. Thanks to the help of our community members who volunteered to host cameras on their property, Jaylen has managed to monitor more than double the recommended amount.
Analyzing collected data
Jaylen and Dr. Elizabeth Gow, the scientific advisor for Vancouver Cat Count, are now getting ready to process the images using different computer software designed for research with cameras. These software programs are helping to train artificial intelligence to identify animals captured by trail cameras and will, in the future, make the task of going through over a million photos easier. While computer software will make this task easier, Jaylen has already started sorting through the images manually and noticed several interesting trends:
- most cat images were captured in Vancouver’s residential areas;
- the final deployment period was the most successful for capturing images of individual cats. This could mean one of two things: cats are more active towards the end of the summer, or, most likely, the placement and positioning of wildlife cameras improved as the study progressed.
One of the most concerning observations is that the City of Vancouver’s outdoor cat populations are often in the exact same areas as Vancouver’s coyote population. Below is a series of images edited together to visualize how many animals are using the same outdoor spaces. This is particularly concerning as many cat owners may not be aware of the significant risk outdoor cats face in Vancouver specifically. Our hope is that this research will improve the lives and well-being of both the cat and bird populations of Vancouver.
Once image processing and data analyses are completed, a final report will be compiled to summarize the results and highlight priority areas for targeted outreach and education about cat welfare and cat predation issues in Vancouver. We will use lessons learned in this research to review and, if needed, re-design cat count methodology to have it replicated across different municipalities across British Columbia.
Stay Connected!
More information about Vancouver Cat Count is on our Cats and Birds Research Projects page. Visit Jaylen’s info page to find media releases and further updates from Vancouver Cat Count.
