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National biodiversity award for MammalWeb project

22 November 2024
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Otters stare at the camera after being caught on a camera trap

Our MammalWeb project has won a national biodiversity award for its work to gather information on the distribution, abundance, habits and behaviours of UK and European wild mammals.

MammalWeb was presented with the NBN Group Award 2024 at the National Biodiversity Network Conference.

The NBN awards recognise and celebrate the outstanding contributions made to wildlife recording and data sharing, which is helping to improve our understanding of the UK’s biodiversity and assisting conservation efforts.

Citizen science

MammalWeb is a national not-for-profit organisation, established in 2013 in collaboration between Durham University and Durham Wildlife Trust.

Its mission is to address the lack of information about UK and European wild mammals through citizen science.

Members of the public capture images of wildlife, using camera traps, which are uploaded to MammalWeb.

The images are then classified online, either by the people who deployed the camera traps – called “trappers” – or by other participants called “spotters”.

Contributors’ camera traps have captured 2.3 million classified image sequences and videos, of which more than 700,000 are mammal detections.  

This award is fabulous recognition of the huge efforts of thousands of committed volunteers who help to collect footage of our wild mammals, to tell us what’s pictured in that footage, or both. Those efforts, in turn, bear witness to the passionate concern felt by so many that we should all play our part in trying to avert the biodiversity crisis unfolding in Britain, as elsewhere.
Professor Philip Stephens
Founding Director of MammalWeb, Department of Biosciences
Two people smile at the camera holding a certificate.

Dr Sammy Mason, a former Durham University PhD student, and Professor Russell Hill, Department of Anthropology, who are directors at MammalWeb, receive the NBN Group Award 2024.

A camera trap is fitted to a tree.

Citizen scientists capture mammal activity using camera traps. Credit: Laura Degnan.

A fox looks at the camera after being caught on a camera trap.

Since MammalWeb was founded in 2013, contributors’ camera traps have captured 2.3 million classified image sequences and videos, of which more than 700,000 are mammal detections.  Here a red fox looks at the camera. Credit: Pen-Yuan Hsing.

Future research and conservation 

MammalWeb uses AI and machine-learning to help process the millions of images captured and filter out unsuitable images.

The project has created a comprehensive central store for this information to be used by researchers across the UK and beyond.  

This supports future research and conservation while also helping to inform policy decisions that affect wildlife.  

Find out more

Otters at night. Credit: Roland Ascroft