User manual

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Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project Last revised May 2012
• Include a scale of some sort. Often this may be leaving the scale you used for an individual track
on the ground by that track (thus also giving a reference for where the individual track sits in the
pattern).
• Try to take picture looking straight down on trail to reduce distortion. If this is impossible due to
size of trail, include scales both near and far to account for distortion.
Sketches and Measurements
Fill out the Target species data sheet to record this information for Level 1 species. Attempt to make all
drawings either life size or to scale (note what scale is).
CITIZEN WILDLIFE MONITORING PROJECT
WILDLIFE SIGN INTERPRETATION AND DOCUMENTATION GUIDELINES
(From Wilderness Awareness School)
TRACK MEASUREMENT GUIDELINES
Length and Width: Use track minimum outline.
Group length: measured from the back of the track furthest back in a set of 4 tracks to the front of the
track furthest forward. NOT USED FOR walking or trotting gaits (groups of 2).
Stride: measured from a place on one foot (such as the “center of the front left”) to the same place on the
same foot the next time it appears in the trail.
Straddle: distance from the outside of the leftmost track in a trail to the outside of the rightmost (using
minimum outline). Also called trail width.
Center Straddle: distance from the center of the leftmost track in a trail to the center of the rightmost.
Trough: width of the entire disturbance created by an animal’s trail (greater then the minimum outline
of the tracks which may be indecipherable in some instances).