The popular WildDogScan community resource has reached an exciting milestone this week, with 100,000 community records of wild dog activity entered across Australia.
WildDogScan is now being used by farmers, landholder associations, wild dog groups, pest control professionals, biosecurity groups, and Government agencies. It has been progressively designed in consultation with landholder groups since 2015, and it now supports over 165 private landholder and biosecurity groups who are using the software to monitor, map and manage wild dogs.
People using the program can record wild dog activity, upload photos from monitoring cameras, view where wild dog attacks have occurred in their local area, and record control activities (such as trapping and baiting programs).
Landholder groups (such as the Hargraves-Hill End Pest Management Group – see image), use information entered by local landholders, to decide when and where control is required. People using WildDogScan also receive email alerts, enabling them to receive messages quickly about any new sightings of wild dogs or wild dog attacks nearby.
Over 80 pest control professionals now use WildDogScan for mapping their control activities. Landholders in private groups using WildDogScan also get to see the results of the professional pest controllers on the map.
Over 5,000 photos have now been uploaded by farmers, pest controllers and other land managers, including images from wildlife monitoring cameras.
WildDogScan is freely available at www.wilddogscan.org.au, and can be used by anyone to record wild dog sightings, attacks or control actions. Alternatively, download the free FeralScan Pest Mapping App (from Google Playstore or Appstore).
Over the next month, the WildDogScan website and App will be enhanced to help people more easily view summary data of wild dog activity, including trends in their region, and throughout the year.
For more information or assistance with WildDogScan, contact Peter West (FeralScan Project Leader) from NSW Department of Primary Industries. Email – Peter.west@dpi.nsw.gov.au