A refreshing website has emerged to help tackle the questions no one can accurately answer:
- Just how many koalas are left?
- Where do they live?
- In what general condition?
Koalatracker.com.au enables the crowdsourcing of koala data from the community, nationwide. It is recording important information on alive sightings, so councils, developers and the community knows the location of koala populations. It is more significantly, recording the location and situation of injured, sick and dead koalas, including cause of death and injury, so that hotspots for car strikes, the location of disease, so that action might be taken by the community, developers, councils and state governments, to mitigate risks to this vulnerable species.
The objective is to have a single central and transparent repository of data to assist in creating meaningful conservation strategies, bringing together government agencies across relevant states, community conservation groups, researchers and interested individuals.
(Update, April 2012: Originally launched in February 2010 as KoalaDiaries, the site was re-branded KoalaTracker.com.au on 10th April 2012.)
It is free to join Koalatracker.com.au, as is the use of the data being gathered. It is intended to be a user-friendly resource for government agencies, interested individuals, schools and community groups.
Make the most of it. Use it. Tell your friends.
Contact:
Alex Harris
Website Creator
Koalatracker.com.au
Tel: 0412 635 274