The Latest, Greatest Wildlife Recovery App Version is Here!

The moment all you field folks have been waiting for has finally arrived. We have updated the Wildlife Recovery (WR) App after last year’s Pipeline Spill in Huntington Beach, and the newest version is now available to download on the App Store! So, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who provided feedback on the app after that spill. You all really helped flush out some issues, provided recommendations on ways to improve it, and helped pave the way for what I believe is the best version yet. For those of you who don’t know what the WR App is, it is our greatest field data collection tool during oil spill response. It is an iOS app that our field teams use to collect data on oil affected wildlife they have captured, observations they make while in the field, and deployment locations for trail cameras and hazing/deterrence devices. So essentially, it’s a really big deal!

Before launching into the things we’ve updated, I wanted to share with all of you one of the things we were not able to address. One of the most common suggestions I received was to implement an alert telling you that the email you send when transferring data was not sent, if in fact it was not sent due to a lack of Wi-Fi connection. Unfortunately, this was not something we could add in currently, as the email interface on iOS does not return any error messages. However, we are currently working on ways we can ensure that all data is transferred and emailed successfully, so have no fear – we will come up with a solution to address this issue in the near future.

Now onto some of the things we were able to fix! I will not cover everything that was changed, but here are a few of the highlights.

1. The “notes” section is now longer, not wider, so that you can view everything you type in one box without having to scroll sideways
2. If you misspell something, it will underline it in red
3. When sending the csv and kmz files, the wrapp@ucdavis email auto populates so you no longer need to type it in each time you email the data
4. There is a reminder that you need to take photos of the ACT and the animal, and scan the QR code before you save your data point
5. The Survey Name section can now contain up to 25 characters instead of 15
6. And last but not least, the Survey Start and Survey End are so much easier to find! You no longer have to waste time searching through things to find them, so hopefully that will help relieve some of the frustrations surrounding starting and stopping your survey

If you want to see a full video run through of the WR App, you can view it below. If you’d like to follow along with the video, feel free to download the Wildlife Recovery App from the app store and enter in the data as I go through it. Like always, if you have any questions/comments/concerns, please reach out to me directly and I will do my best to address them!

-Jennie