Last year, Kenji Sabine paid more in taxes as an oil and gas industry worker than what he earns in his current role as a wilderness trailblazer, but he's so passionate about it he says he'd do it for free.
Mr Sabine moved from Western Australia after securing a job with the University of Tasmania to deploy 500 trail cameras in rarely accessed landscapes of Tasmania.
He will carry 15 to 25 trail cameras at a time for days or sometimes weeks with the help of a small team to difficult-to-reach locations for wildlife observation.
The camera network is being installed to support scientific research and will be used by academics and PhD candidates at the university.
Bushman's creed
Mr Sabine said a "bushman's creed" of not sharing knowledge to protect environmental integrity meant there was little information about the areas to which he and his team travelled.
He said he relied on a variety of maps and his own experience to plot pathways that crossed mountains and rivers.
"I look at a whole bunch of different maps, such as satellite imagery, topography maps, vegetation type and time since last fire," Mr Sabine said.
"When I look at all these spatial layers and use my own experience about what the understorey would look like, you can start to piece together a path of least resistance but also the path that's most safe."
It was his curiosity about a "giant" Tasmanian devil scat that led to Mr Sabine landing the camera-deploying role.
He approached an academic at University of Tasmania for identification of the scat and in conversation learnt about the university's need to extend an existing network of easily accessible cameras into remote areas.
His interest was piqued.
"They were looking for someone who had project management experience, who's used to dealing with safety systems and could work with a bit of agency – a can-do attitude," Mr Sabine said.
"Coming from the oil and gas industry as an engineer, that was my bread and butter."
Carrying a 137-litre pack stocked with food, fuel and camping gear, Mr Sabine then includes up to 25 trail cameras for deployment.
"If you think of a Woolies bag, about 25 cameras would be one and a half of those bags, so I'll put that in there" Mr Sabine said.
"My pack is this big, bloated balloon when I'm setting off and when I'm coming back, it's a very sad shrivelled sack."
Documenting Tasmania
The data collected is used to monitor native and invasive species in the southwest of Tasmania, including the sub-alpine moorlands of the Central Plateau and Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park.
The information helps researchers to better understand the spread and impact of invasive species, including deer, lyrebirds and feral cats.
"There's one lady, Alexandra Paton, she's using it to look at feral cats and the impact they have on biodiversity here in Tasmania," Mr Sabine said.
"We have also noticed between setting and retrieving data in the Jane River area [in Tasmania's remote west] it looks like lyrebird activity has increased, so we think they might be spreading quite rapidly."
Visual diseases such as Tasmanian devil facial tumour and wombat mange are also monitored through the network.
A machine learning classifier, which will automatically identify all animals captured by the trail cameras, is being developed.
At present researchers manually go through video footage from all cameras to identify and categorise species.
Although the focus of the network is current projects, Mr Sabine said it provides a "pristine baseline" of Tasmania's current environment.
"It's more than likely the benefits of what I'm doing will be for future generations," Mr Sabine said.
"These areas are not influenced by direct land use, they're influenced more by global warming. If someone were to complete the same transects in 20 years' time they might find something different. It's important to get a baseline right now."
The combination of remote and easily accessible cameras could highlight human impact on other species.
"How do animals live in the absence of humans, what happens, is there a difference?" Mr Sabine said.
"Is all human land use detrimental for animals and what natural drivers are there to promote biodiversity?"
From paid worker to volunteer
From last month, Mr Sabine will no longer be paid to place the trail cameras, but he'll continue in the role as a volunteer.
He does this as he believes the work will have ongoing benefits for monitoring Tasmania's changing environment and species.
Over the coming months he will deploy 265 additional cameras before returning in a year's time to either download data or collect the cameras depending on difficulty of access.
He said the experience has been "one big adventure" and that returning from camera deployment missions left him with mixed feelings.
"You feel relieved, because you can relax and you're out of the remote areas, but you also miss it too," Mr Sabine said.
"The wilderness, once you get out there, it gets under your skin and then you just can't wait to get out once more and do the same thing over and over again."
