Hyderabad: App to track wildlife in human dwellings

Hyderabad: With the Covid-19 literally forcing humans behind doors, wild animals never had it so good and are freely roaming and even entering human habitations, including towns and cities across the city. Footages of animals ambling on empty streets are going viral around the globe. Closer home, an Asian palm civet was recently spotted in Dubbak mandal of Siddipet district.

To keep track of such instances, Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has developed an app 'Lockdown Wildlife Tracker' through which anyone can record if they spot any wild animal in their locality. Dr Bilal Habib, Associate Professor, Wildlife Institute of India (WII), said, "In this time of the Covid-19 lockdown, where we humans are locked inside our homes, there are more and more reports of wildlife exploring the human habitats.

These instances can be reported real-time or later but only till the lockdown lasts. This free app makes it convenient to keep track of what you see while making your data available for further analysis and interpretation." At present the app can be downloaded from the website of Wildlife Institute of India at wii.gov.in. Very soon this app would be available in Google playstore app with more options. After the lockdown, Wildlife Institute of India will share the data with the respective states and also come with detailed state-specific reports and national reports.

The information collected as part of this initiative during lockdown phase will help in wildlife conservation and management in the long run, added the professor. Also to make it available in regional languages, city-based organisation Vata Foundation developing Hindi and Telugu versions of this app. It would be made available very soon, said Uday Krishna, the founder of Vata Foundation.

"Our team is working in association with WII to develop it. Basically, this app is developed to keep track of animals that are seen venturing out in human locality. If anybody comes across them, they can upload pictures in the app and this would also help in studying the migrating patterns of animals," he added.