We had a great question come up in last night’s Open House that I wanted to share with the community. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to be worried about what other humans might do with our stations, whether it’s destroying it, stealing it, or just messing around.
So, how do you keep your FieldKit station from being interfered with?
One brilliant idea that @Jer has seen for disguising a station in an urban environment is to use a rat bait box, which, obviously, very few people would want to interfere with.
I’d love to hear how other people have dealt with this problem putting hardware in the field, both what has worked and what hasn’t.
I have not had practical use of Fieldkit - but I have trained in Community Engagement in Biodiversity / Environmental. So, my suggestion would be instead of hiding what it is… use the ‘magic box’ idea … i.e. have signage to explain what this box is actually doing and a way of the public having direct access to the community / environmental project (with visual graphics and/ or wording for info exchange ) or in digitally affluent countries, use a QR Code linked to the project and ways that the public can engage or support the project as part of linking social / community benefit and hopefully catching that person’s curiosity for positive interaction with the fieldkit box instead of destructive behaviours or actions towards it.