NCS made regional partner of RoadWatch

Surat: Nature Club Surat (NCS), a non-governmental organization working for wildlife and bird rescue, has been appointed regional partner for ‘RoadWatch’ mobile application initiative jointly launched by Wildlife Trust of India and David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation to help citizens report wildlife roadkills using their smartphones from anywhere in the country.
The mobile application — RoadWatch — has been specially designed to gather data such as Global Positioning System location, images, type of animal, date of record, etc. Its interface is easy to use and enables a user to acquire and transmit the data in less than a minute. Wildlife Trust of India’s Jose Louies said, “The idea was to build a user-friendly and reliable system to collect roadkill information with a high degree of accuracy.”
Wildlife researcher Radhika Bhagat said, “The app will help in mapping roadkill hotspots, identify the worst-affected species and assess the efficacy of existing mitigation measures.” The data collected through the mobile application will be an open source. This will potentially assist in better planning of linear infrastructure such as roads.
NCS’s Snehal Patel said, “NCS is acting as a regional partner for this project and will raise awareness among people through various activities.” Patel said the aim of RoadWatch initiative is to identify roadkill hotspots and build a roadkill map in India, identifying worst-affected species, raise public awareness.