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Countries committed to implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2011–2020 strategic plan need effective tools to monitor global trends in biodiversity. Remote cameras are a rapidly growing technology that has great potential to transform global monitoring for terrestrial biodiversity and can be an important contributor to the call for measuring Essential Biodiversity Variables. Recent advances in camera technology and methods enable researchers to estimate changes in abundance and distribution for entire communities of animals and to identify global drivers of biodiversity trends. We suggest that interconnected networks of remote cameras will soon monitor biodiversity at a global scale, help answer pressing ecological questions, and guide conservation policy. This global network will require greater collaboration among remote‐camera studies and citizen scientists, including standardized metadata …