Cara Appel

Wildlife Ecology | Computer Vision

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I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Gaynor Lab at the University of British Columbia, supported by the AI and Biodiversity Change Global Center. I am interested in projects bridging the fields of wildlife ecology and computer vision. I recently completed my PhD in Wildlife Science at Oregon State University, where I worked on bioacoustics for monitoring northern spotted owls and computer vision methods with camera traps for monitoring mammal communities in Oregon and Malawi. Previously I studied habitat ecology and distribution of North American porcupines in the Pacific Northwest.

news

Oct 18, 2026 My work assessing the recovery of translocated large mammals in Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, Malawi, has just been published in Biological Conservation: Spatial ecology and recovery patterns of a translocated mammal community in southern Africa
Jan 19, 2026 Update: I successfully defended my PhD in December, and in January I began a postdoc position at The University of British Columbia!
Oct 15, 2025 I’m excited to share two recently published papers: Developing custom computer vision models with Njobvu-AI: A collaborative, user-friendly platform for ecological research in Ecological Applications and Decoding owl calls: Refining occupancy inference from passive acoustic monitoring in Ecology and Evolution
Jan 31, 2025 Find me on Bluesky at cappel.bsky.social
Dec 21, 2023 Welcome to my website :wave: