Abstract:

The Sanjiangyuan Community-based Camera-trapping Monitoring Platform relies on the help of local Tibetan herders with nature conservation efforts. This platform uses infrared-triggered camera trapping, which is important for research on Sanjiangyuan wildlife ecology, animal behavior, biodiversity monitoring, and evaluation of community management for conservation. The platform was established in October 2013 by Center for Nature and Society of Peking University and Shanshui Conservation Center. As of June 2019, the platform has 9 functional monitoring sites with 264 local rangers in Yushu Prefecture and Banma County in Guoluo Prefecture, covering an area of about 7,000 km ². We obtained 2,524,300 pictures resulting in 120,000 independent detections and documented 30 mammal and 37 bird species. This data has been used in surveying wildlife richness, accessing density and population dynamics of snow leopards (Panthera uncia), studying the inter-species relationship between snow leopards and co-occurring carnivores, and sharing management experience of community-based monitoring. The future directions for this platform will be to further summarize and publish the research results from the database, build a cloud-based database for better data sharing and public participation, establish an interactive management platform for national park administrators with the application of handhold terminals designed for national park rangers, and to identify species and snow leopard individuals via artificial intelligence.

Key words: Sanjiangyuan, camera trapping, community-based monitoring, snow leopard (Panthera uncia), biodiversity