In 2021, Utah passed a trail camera law. This law required the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to regulate trail cameras. These regulations have not been made yet however, we know the Division of Wildlife Resources is in favor of banning trail cameras from August to December of every year. This probably means laws will be passed that ban trail cameras on public lands for some parts of the year. The good thing about this law is it will have 2 major loopholes!
If you would like to learn more about these laws click below!
For these loopholes to work, it is good to know this. One of the main parts of the Utah trail camera law defines what a trail camera is. They are now defined as this, 1” trail camera” which means a device that is not held or manually operated by a person and is used to capture images, video, or location data of wildlife using heat or motion to trigger the device.
This means if any camera meets this definition by law it is a trail camera. This now redefines most security cameras on the outside of any business or home and they are now trail cameras. This means if the Division of Wildlife Recourses bans trail cameras on private lands they will have issues upholding this law because of the number of security cameras in Utah that meet this definition. Because of this definition of trail cameras, they are kept safe on all private lands because there is no way to legally ban security cameras.
Loophole #1
Because trail cameras cannot be banned on private lands due to the definition above, they cannot be regulated on them. Some people will scoff at this because they don’t have any private lands in an area where they want to put up trail cameras. But, there are large portions of private land that are open for public use. (As a side note we do not promote illegal trespassing. If a property is posted as private property or no trespassing, do not enter that person’s land.) Because these lands are private it will be open for trail camera use. These lands can be found using the Utah Parcel Map. This map will show you what is private, state owned, and federally owned lands. If trail cameras are banned for parts of the year you can use this map to find the large portions of private lands open for public use. This may take some trial and error, but you can also employ google earth and other apps like Onx maps to help find these areas.
Also, some properties are marked as private property on parts of the property but not the whole property is marked as private property. These areas could also be used for trail cameras.
Loophole #2
This loophole also relys on the above trail camera definition. Trail cameras are now legally difined as a camera that uses motion or heat to have the camera start recording or taking pictures.
A good way around this is using a camera that is always recording and uploading live video to a socail media platform like Youtube or Facebook. This option is a bit more expensive but the camera would not be a trail camera. This is because it is not set off by motion or heat. This option can be harder to set up because you would need to set up a wifi connection to a live camera. This can be hard but with (shout out to Elon Musk) the new Star Link internet that will be avalible in the near future could be made a lot easier. This would also make it possible to reach areas that are not normally possible to reach because it will be availble in remote areas.
1 Trail Camera definition copied from HB0295. (n.d.). https://le.utah.gov/~2021/bills/static/HB0295.html.