When walk through a market on vacation , and you spot what you surmise is an endangered specie for cut-rate sale , what should you do ? Ideally , you ’d report it to the authority , but often this can be unmanageable , especially in a commonwealth where you do n’t speak the language . Well , in a command to help track the illegal sales agreement of animals and their products , conservationists have developedan app for your smartphone that allows users to report anything they see , calledWildlife Witness .
The craft in jeopardise wildlife is a multi - billion one dollar bill industry . gross revenue of these products , from timber to LTTE , can reach astronomical cost , with rhino horn now thought to control upward of $ 66,000 per kilo . In many lawsuit , the money made from these market funds criminal and terrorist organisation around the world . But the exfoliation of the problem , and its crosswalk into the shady underworld make it hard to monitor .
The app has been developed by Taronga Zoo and the wildlife crime monitoring radical TRAFFIC . © Taronga Zoo
“ Sadly , animals are being illegally killed or occupy from the wild around the human beings to be sold for traditional medicines , luxury intellectual nourishment , horn and other component part , eatery dishes , fashion items or pets,”explainsDr . Chris Shepherd , the Southeast Asia Regional Director forTRAFFIC , the international organization that supervise illegal wildlife trade , and who helped launchthe app . “ We need multitude to be the eyes and auricle in the competitiveness against illegal wildlife trade . ”
The aim isfor anyone who is wondering around markets , whether they are local or people on holiday , and make out something that they do n’t think is right , such as suspected Panthera tigris parts , horn or pangolin ( the most traffic mammal in the world ) on a restaurant card , to take a photo and lade it onto the app with the location . The developer are quick to accentuate , however , that people should not put themselves in peril so as to take picture , and if it is too dangerous to do so , then just logging what they saw and where is enough information .
The aim is for tourist and locals to help supervise the illegal swap in wildlife , such as this pangolin , which has luckily just been rescue . Wildlife Alliance / Flickr CC BY - SA 2.0
This data will then be sent to TRAFFIC and analyzed by a Wildlife Crime Data Analyst , which over time will allow others to be up on the selective information , and help prioritize or foreground any hotspots for illegal activity that are revealed . Developed as a quislingism betweenTaronga Conservation Society Australiaand TRAFFIC , so far the app is concentrate on the markets of Southeast Asia , which is the globose hub of wildlife barter and criminal offence .
As well as having the ability to pin a location and add details about what is seen , Wildlife Witnesswill also contain info on which species are threatened by craft , how they are frequently trade , as well as the safest itinerary through which to report any observed illegal activity .
principal image : USFWS Mountain - Prairie/ Flickr CC BY 2.0
