On this project we were once again working with Mossy Earth, this time in their recently purchased ~200 hectares of land on the Río Tiputini, Orellana, Ecuador.

The rope work had two objectives: rigging to get the ME team (and local guides) up into the canopy for filming purposes on their YouTube channel, and to install some camera traps in the canopy to supplement the conventional array on the ground.

The land borders the Yasuní national park in the Amazon rainforest – THE most biodiverse place on Earth. With five cameras dedicated to the arboreal array, Ollie set about looking for “canopy highways”, big branches that interconnect different trees allowing connectivity through the canopy for the animals that live there.

At best the team were hoping for a couple of shots of some birds and maybe a mammal if they were lucky. Nobody could have expected that despite having a third fewer cameras, the arboreal array would outdo the terrestrial camera traps in both quantity and quality videos. Below is a select few highlights:

Clearly there is a lot going on unobserved in the canopy! Plans are already in action to take this project further and we are currently looking at ways to publish these results. The next goal is getting a full body shot of that sloth!

We have also been working on some exciting developments coming to the world of canopy camera trapping, so stay tuned for that too!

Project Partners: