Overcoming the Distance Estimation Bottleneck in Camera Trap Distance Sampling

Biodiversity crisis is still accelerating. Estimating animal abundance is of critical importance to assess, for example, the consequences of land-use change and invasive species on species composition, or the effectiveness of conservation interventions. Camera trap distance sampling (CTDS) is a recently developed monitoring method providing reliable estimates of wildlife population density and abundance. However, in current applications of CTDS, the required camera-to-animal distance measurements are derived by laborious, manual and subjective estimation methods. To overcome this distance estimation bottleneck in CTDS, this study proposes a completely automatized workflow utilizing state-of-the-art methods of image processing and pattern recognition.