10 DAYS LEFT TO RAISE 33K! – Make a contribution to Save Snapshot Serengeti { HERE }

At this very moment in Serengeti National Park, hundreds of cameras are automatically taking photographs day and night, in corners of the park where people almost never go. These are camera traps – remote, automatic cameras that take pictures of passing wildlife – and they take some of the most amazing, natural and important photos of the Serengeti’s animals. But their initial funding has run out, and they’re asking for your help so they can keep the cameras up and running for years to come.

Operated by the long-term Serengeti Lion Project, Snapshot Serengeti is a massive camera-trapping project that captures the secret lives of Africa’s most elusive animals, and brings those photos to your computer. In fact, because these cameras take over 1 million photos each year, we rely on volunteers like you to help us identify the animals within.

The photographs captured on these cameras are not only thrilling to see, but they are helping us understand how this amazing ecosystem works so that we can continue to protect it into the future. Today we launched the sixth season of photos from the project – unfortunately, they might be the last. Our funding from the National Science Foundation has run out, and unless we raise $30,000 to keep our rickety Land Rovers running, Snapshot Serengeti will shut down. We’ve launched a crowd funding campaign { here } to ask for your support.

There is still much to learn about the Serengeti, and many of its secrets can only be understood by long-term projects that capture both annual variability and unexpected events. The Snapshot Serengeti cameras let us study this incredibly dynamic system in a way that was never possible before. Even in the few months since Season 5, the wildebeest migration has come and gone, wild dogs swept through our area, and a long-lost pride of lions returned home.

Please check out our Indiegogo campaign and support us if you can. We’ve got some thank you “perks” that you might enjoy, such as a postcard from the Serengeti, a picture of YOUR picture with a Serengeti lion, and even one of our old cameras that has been gnawed on too many times to use anymore.

And whether or not you can support us directly, please share the campaign link – igg.me/at/serengeti – with your friends and family. We’re not asking for luxuries — have you seen our drop-toilet? — we’re just trying to keep the land rovers chugging along and the cameras clicking by raising money to pay for diesel, equipment, and field assistant salaries. The more people help out, the better our chances of truly understanding what makes this incredible ecosystem work – and the better our chances of bringing the Serengeti to your computer screen for years to come.