A Europe-wide camera-trap project has released its first two years of wildlife observations: 100,000 records from more than 1,000 locations. The collection offers researchers and wildlife managers a shared starting point for asking how mammals and birds are distributed across national borders. A report by Carla Avolio describes Snapshot Europe as the largest open-access survey of mammals and birds spanning the continent.
Snapshot Europe was launched in 2021 by the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and Euromammals. Its first public dataset covers 2021 and 2022 and draws on contributions from more than 160 camera-trap experts at 118 organizations in 22 countries. Fabiola Iannarilli, the project’s scientific coordinator, is identified as the paper’s first author; Francesca Cagnacci, Euromammals coordinator, is its senior author. The paper was published in the journal Ecology.
The project uses a standardized autumn survey. Each year from August through November, collaborators place remotely triggered cameras in wild areas, cities and parks. About 1,000 locations were sampled annually, representing the European continent’s ecoregions. Cameras take a series of images when their infrared sensors detect movement. The method is noninvasive and records ground-dwelling animals, from small rodents to bears. An AI model suggests an animal label for each image, which a collaborator checks and approves.
Making observations public and using a shared approach could help address a problem that crosses borders: wildlife does not follow national boundaries, while data can be difficult to find, compare or access. The report says the dataset is intended to support work on biodiversity, human disturbance and conservation. Those are opportunities the collection may enable; the first release does not itself answer all of those questions.
In the reported 2021–2022 results, red deer were detected most often, followed closely by roe deer. Wild boar, red foxes and European rabbits were also common. The paper’s authors note that camera height and the high abundance of these animals are expected to make them more likely to be photographed. So detection frequency should not be treated as a direct measure of population size.
The report also gives comparisons within the survey: Belgium had the highest number of daily observations, with European rabbits appearing on camera as many as 10 times a day. Parco Nazionale Casentino in Italy had the greatest recorded species diversity, with 15 species documented, including red deer, badgers, wolves and martens. These are survey findings for the reported dataset, not evidence that either place has the continent’s largest wildlife population.
The cameras also recorded northern raccoons in Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic. Originally from North America, raccoons were brought to Europe for fur farming in the 1920s, according to the report. The records can contribute to understanding the species’ distribution in its nonnative range, though the article does not present a continent-wide estimate of that range.
The team is compiling data from 2023 to 2025. Repeating the standardized survey may make it possible to compare observations over time and build a picture of how wildlife is changing. For now, the first release is a public resource for asking those questions, rather than a trend report.
<a href="https://phys.org/news/2026-11-largest-dataset-date-wildlife-europe.html">Source: Release of largest dataset to date on wildlife in Europe</a>