Trail Camera Spacing Calculator
Pick a target species or enter a known home range, and get a recommended grid spacing for laying out trail cameras across your survey area.
Recommended camera spacing
Home ranges vary hugely by region, sex, season, and individual — these presets are illustrative midpoints from published wildlife studies, not a guarantee for your site. A denser local population usually needs tighter spacing than the preset suggests.
Designing a camera-trap grid
Camera-trap survey design generally sizes spacing to the smallest home range among the species you’re targeting, so that even the most range-restricted individual is likely to cross at least one camera’s detection zone. Spacing much wider than that risks missing residents entirely; spacing much tighter wastes cameras and effort without meaningfully improving detection.
If you’re surveying for several species at once, run the calculator for each and use the tightest (smallest) spacing among them as your grid baseline.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is spacing based on the square root of home range area?
If you imagine laying cameras out on a square grid, each camera effectively 'covers' one grid cell. Setting the cell's side length equal to the square root of the target animal's typical home range area means each home range statistically contains close to one camera cell — tight enough to reliably detect a resident animal, without over-spending on cameras packed closer than the science calls for.
Why do the species presets vary so much?
Home range size scales with an animal's size, diet, and social structure — a raccoon's range is typically under a couple of square kilometres, while a male black bear's can run into the tens of square kilometres. The presets here are illustrative midpoints pulled from published wildlife studies, useful for a first-pass survey design, not a guarantee for your specific population.
Should I always use the exact recommended spacing?
Treat it as a starting point to adjust for your site. Terrain, trail density, and your survey's goal (confirming presence versus estimating density precisely) all matter too. A denser or more territorial local population, or a survey aiming to catch every resident individual rather than just confirm presence, usually calls for tighter spacing than the raw home-range math suggests.
Educational tool only. Home ranges vary by region and individual — confirm against local wildlife-agency data for a survey that needs to hold up scientifically.