Camera Trap Surveys of Native and Feral Vertebrates in Wet Tropics National Parks, Queensland, 2022–2023 

The data is a collection of camera trap images collected by the Ecological Cascades Lab at the University of Queensland to study interactions between native and invasive vertebrates in North Queensland's Wet Tropics Rainforests. The data was collected as part of the lead author's PhD project and camera trap surveys conducted here complement and extend prior surveys conducted by former researchers studying feral cats in North Queensland forests. Important to note that these surveys implemented paired camera deployments, where each sampling location received a camera placed on the road and another camera placed 50 m into the forest. Sampling locations were typically spaced 1km apart from each other, though this varies between small and large landscapes.

The data is now integrated into the Wildlife Observatory of Australia (WildObs,) a national camera-trap data platform that brings together previously fragmented wildlife monitoring datasets into a consistent, well-structured, and reusable resource. This metadata record provides a gateway to camera trap datasets available through TERN EcoPlots, ALA Occurrence Records, and the WildObs data platform.
 

We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. The project was funded by both a Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment from the Ecological Soceity of Australia to Zachary Amir and a Discovery Early Career Research Award from the Australian Research Council to Matthew Luskin.
 

Collection of camera trap data was primarily to study the interactions between invasive and native vertebrates, and also using dataset as an exemplar to determine the best ways to share camera trap data.
 

Paired camera trap deployments were used to characterise each study site. At each site, one camera was positioned along a linear feature (e.g. road or trail), while a second camera was deployed more than 50 m into adjacent bushland. Sites were typically spaced 1-2 km apart, although spacing varied depending on park size, accessibility, and logistical constraints. Cameras were deployed for approximately 2-3 months per sampling period; however, in some cases deployments ended earlier due to memory card capacity being reached or battery failure prior to retrieval.

Sampling was conducted concurrently across multiple national parks, with two primary survey periods: late 2022 and early 2023. All camera trap data are stored in Camtrap Data Package (Camtrap DP) format, a frictionless data package standard that includes JSON metadata files describing project-, deployment-, and image-level information. A multi-stage data processing pipeline was developed in R to ensure compliance with the Camtrap DP standard and to minimise data inconsistencies, errors, and processing artefacts.