Conservation

Handykam ceased trading. This page is an archival record of a sector the company supplied. No equipment or support can be provided.

Over its trading life Handykam supplied conservation organisations and projects in the UK and overseas, providing the technology and — as it put it — supporting the projects with expertise and favourable terms. This page records what conservation work actually asked cameras to do, which is a more varied list than most people expect.

Four different jobs

1. Finding out what is there

Before anything can be protected it has to be shown to exist. Trail cameras are the cheapest, least intrusive way to establish presence — of a species on a site, of an animal using a particular route, of a box being occupied. They work in numbers, they work unattended, and they produce evidence rather than impressions. How trail cameras work explains the mechanics.

2. Protecting

CCTV to monitor and protect sites, nests and equipment. Persecution of protected species and disturbance of sensitive sites are both real problems, and so, less dramatically, are vandalism, theft of equipment from reserves, and unauthorised access. A camera on a gate is often the practical answer.

3. Letting people see without disturbing

This is the one that most changed what visitor centres could do. A camera lets people watch a species at close range while the animals experience nothing at all — no approach, no hide, no path cut to a sensitive place. For species where disturbance is the main risk, that is the difference between engagement and damage.

4. Showing funders and supporters the work

Conservation funding depends on demonstrating that something happened. Online access to a camera lets funders, members and the public see their contribution working, which is unusually persuasive for work that is otherwise slow and invisible. A recorded clip of a brood fledging does more for a membership newsletter than several pages of prose.

Beyond wildlife

The company also supplied time-lapse and live-streaming camera systems for work adjacent to conservation: building renovation and construction projects, landscaping and design schemes, event setups and film set construction. It is the same technology doing a different job — a camera watching a habitat restoration take shape over eighteen months is a time-lapse rig, not a nest box camera, but it is built from the same parts.

Bespoke work for husbandry

Captive breeding, rehabilitation and husbandry programmes were a steady source of unusual requirements — a mounting nobody makes, a box shaped for a species nobody sells boxes for, a camera that has to survive a species that will chew it. Being a small manufacturer that made its own boxes and configured its own cameras meant these could simply be built. That flexibility was often more valuable to a project than any specification on a data sheet.

What conservation kit has to be

• Unattended for long periods. Every site visit costs time and causes disturbance.
• Genuinely non-intrusive. Infra-red rather than light; low voltage; nothing that hums, glows or flickers.
• Field-robust. Weather, temperature, damp, salt, livestock, and no mains power.
• Deployable in numbers. Coverage usually beats specification.
• Repeatable. Being able to buy the same unit again in two years matters to a multi-year programme.

The legal frame, which is strict

Most species that conservation projects care about are protected, and cameras are not a loophole. Disturbing Schedule 1 birds at or near an active nest is an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and installing a camera in an occupied box is disturbance. Natural England's guidance covers licensing for birds; the Bat Conservation Trust sets out the position for bats and roosts, which is stricter still; and species such as hazel dormice require licensed handlers for any box work at all. Cameras go in outside the season, under licence, or not at all.

Supporting the organisations

The bodies that make this work possible are mostly charities: your local Wildlife Trust, the Barn Owl Trust, the Woodland Trust, PTES and the RSPB among them. The more they can do, the more gets saved.

Related pages: Science and research · How to build a barn owl box · UK Wildlife Trust links