The battle for conservation of wildlife has received another shot in the arm with a new website —- www.conservationthreats.org —- being launched to encourage public participation in the campaign.
The website, designed by Prakash Matada of Wildlife Matters, aims to document all threats to wildlife and efforts in wildlife conservation in the state and makes them available to the general public, policy-makers, forest department, media, and wildlife enthusiasts.
Any wildlife conservation enthusiast can register himself or herself on the site and upload threats (poaching, fragmentation, mining, forest fires, human- wildlife conflict, road kills, etc.) to wildlife in the protected areas of Karnataka. The site also provides option for uploading images, videos, news clippings and news links.
Matada said that all major threats to wildlife in the state have been documented on the site with relevant photographs. The categorisation of the threats is such that enthusiasts can upload their observations without any problem, he added.
All threats will be mapped in near future and viewers will be able to see the spatial distribution of threats, he said. Reports on various threats can also be generated spatially and temporally. Currently, there is no consolidated information available about the grave threats to wildlife and also encourage people to do their bit, he said.
“We thought we should have better public participation in wildlife conservation. With more and more people travelling to wildlife reserves we thought the best way to make use of this trend is to involve them in wildlife conservation.
This site can be used by travellers, trekkers, wildlife photographers, students, wildlife enthusiasts and media personnel among others. With more and more people using internet and digital photography, we also expect the website to be popularised through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and blogs,” he said.
Matada and his mates, Praveen MV, Vinayak Rao and Hari Krishnan, took a year to develop the website.
Currently, the website focuses on the protected areas in Western Ghats. The team hopes to expand the focus area based on response. There are also plans host the Kannada version of the website. The website also allows users to download posters with wildlife messages. The posters can be printed and used in conservation education activities.
