Projects
Any time you upload data to Wildlife Insights, you’ll upload data to a project. A Project is a group of (or a single) camera deployments with a defined objective and methods. The project workspace in Wildlife Insights is where you can manage, edit and review metadata related to locations, deployments and data sharing.
Navigating the project workspace is similar to navigating the organization workspace:
Summary tab: Displays a map of all camera deployments and an overview of data within that project. Summary statistics are typically updated every 24 hours.
Details tab: Set and edit project details, including the project name, objectives, data licenses, embargo time, sensor layout, and options to delete human images. You can also add and edit Subprojects (optional), Camera Deployments (required) and Locations (required).
Identify tab: View all images uploaded to Wildlife Insights through the web-based upload. These images have passed through the AI model and are ready for a user review. You’ll see the project’s images here and can filter by deployment, species and blanks.
Catalogued tab: View images that have been reviewed and verified by a user.
Uploads tab: View all of your uploads and review the status of your image uploads.
Download button: Easily download all the data from the entire project by clicking this button and selecting Request data. To download data from the whole organization, go to the Organization page to request data.
User Permissions button: This button will open a screen where you can invite users to join your project.

Create and Edit a Project
- To create a new project, you can either:
- Use the Projects List (see the screenshot below on the left for an example):
- Click the green Projects List tab on the left side of the screen.
- Select the Add new button at the bottom of the tab.
- Select New project
- Continue to step 2
- From the Manage page (see the screenshot below on the right for an example)
- Navigate to the homepage from anywhere in the platform by clicking on the Manage link at the top of the page.
- Once on the homepage, click the green Create button underneath the large #1.
- Select New project
- Continue to step 2
- Use the Projects List (see the screenshot below on the left for an example):


- Fill out the form, making sure to fill out all required fields. You can return at any time to edit any of these fields described below:
- Organization*: The organization that owns the project. You can reassign a project to a different organization if you have an owner role in both the current and the new organization.
- Initiative: Share your project with other organizations through an initiative. You must have an Initiative Owner or Editor role to assign a project to that initiative.
- Project name*: The full name of your project.
- Website: If your project has a dedicated website, you can enter it here. Please enter websites with http(s)// at the beginning. This website will be displayed on the public project page.
- Project short name*: A short name for your project. This name will be used for display purposes in Wildlife Insights.
- Project type*: There are two types of projects that you can create in Wildlife Insights: Image or Sequence.
- Project Admin*: The name of the project administrator
- Project Admin email*: The email of the project administrator.
- Focal country*: The country where the project is located. If the project operates in multiple countries, please select here the name of the country where the project is coordinated from.
Additional countries: Additional countries where the project operates. - Start date*: The start date of your project.
- End date: The end date of your project. You may leave this empty if your project is ongoing.
- Metadata license*: Assign a license to the metadata (i.e., identifications, locations, project details) in your project. You may select from standard Creative Commons licenses: CC0, CC BY.
- Photos license*: Assign a license to the images in your project. You may select a standard Creative Commons license: CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-NC.
- Embargo: Projects can be embargoed for up to 48 months from the date of entry into Wildlife Insights. You may request an extended or indefinite embargo (i.e., private project status) if your project meets certain legal or cultural requirements.
- Objectives*: State the objectives of the project.
- Credit line: If you would like to specify the individuals or organizations in the citation generated by Wildlife Insights, enter their names in this field. Please enter their names in this format: Last name, First and Middle name initials. If you do not enter anything, credit will go to the Project admin.
- Acknowledgements: If you would like to acknowledge contributors to the project, please enter their information in this field. This information will be made publicly available.
- Project species*: Select whether your project focuses on a single or multiple species. If it focuses on individual species, select which species in the Project Species Individual field.
- Project individual animals: If your project focused on marked individuals (or identified individuals) in a population, please choose Yes.
- Project sensor layout*: Select the sampling layout that most closely represents your cameras.
- Project sensor cluster*: If your cameras were set up in clusters or pairs, please choose Yes
- Project sensor method*: Select if your cameras were set up to trigger by sensor detection, time lapse or both.
- Project blank images removed*: If your dataset includes blank images, please choose Yes. Note: Apart from legacy datasets, Wildlife Insights only accepts complete datasets. Please submit data, including all blanks.
- Project bait use/type: If your project used baited cameras, please choose Yes. Any selection made here will automatically fill in the Deployment Bait Type field. If project bait use=No, all deployments within that project must have a Bait Type= None.
- Project stratification/type*: Record if your projects were stratified across different zones. For example, a stratum may be a protected area vs. a non-protected area.
- Automatically delete the photos identified with humans: Select this option to delete images of humans from images in your project.
- Count is optional: Select this option to make animal count optional and not display it while reviewing images.
Project Types
Data about the animals detected by the camera traps can be recorded in one of two ways: by image or by sequence. You can set how you’d like to record data when the project is created. Note that once a project type is selected, it cannot be changed.
Image project:
- Image projects record data for each individual image. This means that each image is associated with an identification, which Wildlife Insights assumes to be correct after the image is reviewed/edited.
- For example, let’s say a series of 10 images is captured within 60 seconds. There are two armadillos walking past the camera. Five images show one armadillo, three images show two armadillos, and two images are blank. In an image project, you would tag the images according to what was in a single image. That’s to say, five images would be tagged with one armadillo, three images would be tagged with two armadillos, and two images would be tagged as blank.
Sequence project:
-
Sequence projects record data for a sequence of contiguous images taken within 60 seconds of each other. This means that one identification (which could be multiple animals) is assigned to the entire sequence of images. Group size is also a key variable for a sequence (how many animals are captured throughout the series of images in the sequence). If there are two or more species in a sequence, each can be recorded separately within the same sequence and with its group size. The AI model is trained to return the most common result for the sequence.
-
For example, let’s say a series of 10 images is captured in 5 minutes with less than 60 seconds between each image. There are two armadillos walking past the camera. Five images show one armadillo, three images show two armadillos, and two images are blank. In a sequence project, this entire group of images would be tagged as 'armadillo' with a group size of two.
Create a location or deployment
There are two ways you can create a location or deployment:
1. During the upload process you can either create a new location and deployment or select from a list of existing locations and deployments in your project. If you would like to create a new location and/or deployment:
- Select the green New deployment button.
- If you would like to create a new location, you must create a new deployment and then select the green New location button.


2. You can create new locations and deployments at any time in the project details tab:
- Navigate to Project Details tab
- Scroll to the bottom of the page
- You’ll find a table of Locations and Camera Deployments.
- Click on the green New location button or the green New deployment button.
- Note: You can also edit any existing location or deployment here by clicking on the green Edit button on the right hand side of the location or deployment. Learn more about managing locations and deployments.


Embargo
Wildlife Insights encourages users to share their data publicly but also recognizes the need to publish data before sharing. Embargoes offer the opportunity to keep project data private for a period of time before it is made public.
Embargoed data will not be available to the public for the duration of the embargo, but project metadata (e.g., project name, objectives) may be shared with the public. The embargo begins on the date the first image is uploaded to a deployment and is measured separately for each deployment. Read more about embargoed data in our FAQs.
To set an embargo:
- Go to your project details page and scroll to the Embargo field;
- Enter the number of months that you want to embargo your data. The maximum embargo time is 48 months;
- Once an embargo is entered, you'll be prompted with an option to authorize Wildlife Insights and WI Core Partners to use your embargoed data for aggregated products for peer-reviewed publications.
- Scroll down the page and click the green Save Changes button.

Creative Commons Licenses
For each project, you can select how you want to license your data under these Creative Commons licenses:
- Images (recorded data) may be licensed under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-NC.
- Metadata may be licensed under either CC 0 or CC BY.
These licenses are described below:
- Creative Commons Zero (CC0) permits a user to share, adapt and modify the work, even for commercial purposes, without asking permission
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), which permits a data user to share and adapt material with appropriate attribution, including for commercial purposes
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits a data user to share and adapt material with appropriate attribution, only for noncommercial purposes
Delete images of humans
Wildlife Insights provides the option to hide or delete images of humans for organizations with data privacy restrictions. If you’d like to delete images of humans from your private workspaces, select this option in the Project Details page. Images of humans will be deleted only after a user has verified the identification as a human (i.e., the image has moved to the Catalogued section). All other metadata (i.e., timestamp, identification) will still be available after the human image has been deleted.
If the option to delete images of humans is not selected, only Project Owners will be able to see images of humans after the ID has been verified. Images of humans will be hidden from all other users in the project (Project Editors, Collaborators, Taggers and Viewers).
Join an existing project
If you would like to join an existing project, you must be invited by a Project Owner or Editor.
Invite someone to join your Project
Once you’re viewing the project summary page, you can add users by selecting the green people icon button, located on the right side of the screen. This will open a “Users permissions” box where you can invite users by entering their email There are five roles that you can assign at the project level: Owner, Editor, Contributor, Tagger or Viewer. There is no limit on how many users you can add to your project.

Remove a team member from a project
You can remove any user from a project and revoke their access to that entity by opening the User Permissions box and selecting “Revoke”.When someone is removed from a project, all of the data uploaded by that user will remain in the project.