Florida Wildlife Watch, launched May 26 by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, asks volunteers to classify trail-camera photos from six million acres of Wildlife Management Areas. More than 1,000 volunteers have already completed 229,021 classifications, including 83,000+ on day two. The project builds on spring 2024 Everglades trail-cam work and is hosted on Zooniverse; it will run until all images are sorted.
Florida Wildlife Watch: Volunteers Needed to Classify Trail-Cam Photos Across 6 Million Acres
A Florida panther . | Credit: Courtesy of Florida Wildlife Watch / Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
A large volunteer-driven project, Florida Wildlife Watch, has launched to help conservationists classify millions of photos captured by trail cameras across six million acres of Wildlife Management Areas managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).
What Is Florida Wildlife Watch?
Launched on May 26, Florida Wildlife Watch is a citizen-science initiative organized by the FWC that invites the public to help biologists identify animals recorded on trail cameras deployed across the state. The project is hosted on Zooniverse, the online platform created by teams at the University of Oxford and the University of Minnesota for people-powered research.
A pair of red-shouldered hawks | Credit: Courtesy of Florida Wildlife Watch / Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
“Florida Wildlife Watch connects people at home to nature while having a real impact on conservation,”
— Graysen Boehning, FWC statewide participatory science coordinator
Volunteer Impact So Far
In the opening days, volunteers moved quickly: 1,009 people completed 229,021 classifications, with more than 83,000 of those recorded on the project’s second day. Project administrators praised participants for "amazing work," saying volunteers "flew through" the initial batch of images.
A rainbow heron | Credit: Courtesy of Florida Wildlife Watch / Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
Species and Science Goals
Trail cameras have captured a wide range of wildlife, including great blue herons, red-shouldered hawks, gopher tortoises and Florida panthers. The classifications will help biologists monitor species distributions, track wildlife activity, and inform habitat management across public lands.
Background and Scale
This effort expands on spring 2024 trail-cam work in the Everglades—called Everglades Wildlife Watch—which covered roughly 1.6 million acres. The new project scales monitoring across the full area under FWC stewardship statewide. The FWC has said its trail cams produce "millions of wildlife images every year," and there is no fixed end date: the initiative will continue until volunteers have classified the available photos.
How To Help
Anyone can participate: visit the project hub on Zooniverse and click the "Classify" button to view and tag photos. Even a few quick classifications make a meaningful contribution to conservation science.
Why It Matters: Crowd-sourced classifications speed analysis and provide researchers with the data needed to protect habitats and species across Florida.
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