Clare Hawkins

Making our website more accessible, so more people can help make a difference for our threatened species...

The NatureTrackers programme coordinates volunteers and professional scientists to research & protect Tasmania's threatened species. Hundreds of people have now contributed surveys. Together, we've been monitoring our Endangered wedge-tailed eagles (Where? Where? Wedgie!), and mapping Endangered central north burrowing crayfish (Claws on the Line). More project designs are in the pipeline to monitor additional species in future...

The more people involved, the more data we gather

This will help us pick up population changes more quickly, and understand them in more detail, so that we can home in on what these species most need to recover from the threat of extinction. Also...

The more people involved, the more widespread the understanding -

of how we can make the biggest difference. We already know that we, as individuals, can help reduce many of the threats that these species face - from ensuring that we don't disturb breeding or clear essential habitat, to reporting deaths to others who can address the risks, to using predator-safe options to deal with rat infestations...

But as the projects grow, we've discovered something we really need to fix. The focus of this Where? Where? Website! campaign is a website upgrade and maintenance, so that those with poorer internet access or an older computer or tablet can access it more easily. We've had a few too many reports of off-putting glitches over the years. This is hardly ideal for getting out the conservation messages and gathering the data.

Our top priority is the online map where we book to do our eagle surveys - it doesn't upload smoothly on all software formats and equipment. This map is critical to the surveys - it coordinates our efforts so that we sample all conditions across Tasmania - both good and bad for eagles. 

Let's get this sorted...

To attract many more participants (and data!) we’d like to work with specialist mapping developers, to create bomb-proof mapping for the Where? Where? Wedgie! surveys. This includes clever stuff like settings where the map doesn't need to upload onto your browser from scratch every time. 

Online booking map upgrade: $14 000

Budgeting for this stuff is challenging - it can feel a bit like 'how long is a piece of string?'. We want to keep all NatureTrackers projects as low-cost and long-term sustainable as possible, but the website is an essential tool and we need it to work really reliably for everyone. After extensive discussions with various experts, we reckon that with this budget we can get an excellent, well thought-out new set-up that builds on the NatureTrackers' experience so far - including:

• Backend database (with sophisticated security back-up system)
• User registration (with improvements on e.g. our 'forgot password' process)
• Surveyor booking map (including improved reminder emails)
• User's profile (details of what each of us has booked and surveyed)
• Web hosting (mapping and registration data)
• User testing, tweaking, maintenance for the next two years

Misc: $1000

Estimated postage + reward costs:  $285
Pozible costs: 5% x $14285:  $715

Any extra funding...

...will be spent on additional upgrades to attract more people and get them zooming happily around the website exploring everything, and learning all about threatened species conservation and how to do surveys. We're thinking: instant mapping of the survey results as they come in; simplifying the look and feel of the website - there's a lot of info in there now! - and maybe some inspiring stories about surveyors, eagles and more.