Now, an app to record wildlife movement during lockdown

The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun has developed a mobile application, ‘Lockdown Wildlife Tracker’, where people can upload data of wildlife movement

The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun has developed a mobile application, ‘Lockdown Wildlife Tracker’, where people can upload data of wildlife movement near human-dominated zones during the lockdown.

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The application was developed in response to numerous unverified reports on social media of animals and birds being spotted in human settlements. The app lets people upload past as well as real-time records of such incidents on one platform.

“The idea is to understand and document human-wildlife interface during the lockdown. Though it is an extremely difficult period due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the opportunity of such a study has also never arisen in the past,” said Dr Dhananjai Mohan, director, WII. “While our forest staff is already on field as part of essential services and can document changes in the wild, we request citizens to adhere to social distancing norms and not step out or violate lockdown rules for their submissions,” he added.

Currently available for only Android phones, the app has options to upload an existing image or take a picture, add the name of the species and what the animal, bird or reptile is called in their regional language and the global positioning system will collect the coordinates. WII will then study the data’s authenticity and add it to their records.

After the lockdown is lifted, the wildlife body plans to share this data with state governments and also publish detailed state-specific and national reports.

The app will be made available on Google Playstore next week and is currently available at https://wii.gov.in/lockdown_wildlife_tracker.