Paparazzi in the woods

Camera traps hidden in the woods are making animals angry. - By Etienne Benson - Slate Magazine

Camera traps are designed to capture images of wild animals, and in recent years their use by hunters and wildlife biologists has been increasing exponentially. According to one study, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of scientific papers involving data from camera traps every year for the past decade; at any given time, there may be about 10,000 deployed in research projects. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Exact figures are hard to come by, but industry sources say that as many as 300,000 are sold every year, mostly to hunters.

However, how about the attitude of the wildlife towards the paparazzi? According to Benson, the cameras may be hurting the animals they're used to study—and they may be affecting humans, too.

See below a footage of a rare Javan rhino attacking a video camera trap posted by WWF.



Was it angry or just curious? One or another, neither appears serious. The impact of the camera is sure to be much less than the radio tags and collars at least, not too mention the poachers and the changing climate. Anyway, trade-off is always inevitable.

What concerns us most is not the animals' feelings but our imagination of wilderness. It is true that the wilderness is no longer so wild with the surveillance of secret cameras, but does the wilderness ever exist in the modern times?

Still, as we expand the culture of surveillance into nature's last redoubts, it might be worth keeping some of Murie's concerns in mind: namely, that the means we use to promote biodiversity can undermine our purposes and that a technology that's right for one place isn't necessarily right for all places. Wilderness activists of the last century believed it was crucial to maintain a few places where one could hike for days without encountering cars or roads. This wasn't because they hated automobiles—after all, it was cars that made wilderness areas widely accessible for the first time—but because they believed that certain valuable experiences could be had only in their absence. Wilderness activists of this century would do well to consider whether it's worth having a few places where you'll never find a surveillance camera strapped to a nearby tree.

It is upon to human nature, not nature itself.