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Background |
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Objectives |
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Contact |
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Protected Areas |
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National Parks |
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Wildlife Sanctuaries |
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Tiger Reserves |
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Biosphere Reserves |
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Conservation Reserves |
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Community Reserves |
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Species |
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Mammals |
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Birds |
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Reptiles |
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Plants |
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Others |
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Bibliography |
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Trainees Database |
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PA Managers |
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Types of Output |
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Useful Links |
One of the missions of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) is to create a database leading to a National Wildlife Information System. As a step towards fulfilment of this mission, the National Wildlife Database (NWD) Project was initiated with the objective of providing information on the conservation status of animal species, biogeographic regions, administrative units, habitat types and the network of protected areas in India, in a variety of formats and also to provide an extensive bibliographic support for wildlife research.
In the Phase-I (April'88 - March'92) of the Project, efforts were made to evolve simple and rapid ecological methods for data collection and collation, which could also be used by field staff not necessarily trained in wildlife. During this phase of the project, a Relational DataBase Management System (RDBMS) Software was procured and a program created to handle the data in the database. In the Phase-II (April '92-June 96) of the Project, attempts have been made to assist the protected areas (PAs) in setting up their computerised databases on the basis of methodology evolved in Phase-I, and also to modify the software to meet various new requirements. From the original DBase II version, then to DBase III+, Foxbase+ and now Foxpro, the program has undergone changes with time. The NWDM (the National Wildlife Database Manager) program has been exhaustively run for all output options, elaborate checks made and output inconsistencies removed as much as possible. During this time, the main thrust has been in data input, data validation, software modifications to meet new requirements and creation of visual outputs in the form of maps, graphs and charts. The quantity of data thus increased and the quality improved.
In order to meet the requirements of modern wildlife planning and conservation, a growing need was felt to establish spatial databases. This was facilitated by the availability of advanced Geographic Information System (GIS) packages, which allow linkages between non-spatial and spatial databases. Using the Arc/Info, ArcView GIS package, a spatial dimension has been added to the Foxpro based National Wildlife Database, thus linking spatial and non-spatial data. This linkage has enabled the database to provide spatial representation of data for better visualisation and analysis, and extract a lot of spatial information by querying the spatial database.
As an important objective of the project, to establish linkages with people such as researchers, scientists, protected area managers and planners, and with other data centres, networking with other data centres is now visualised as being of vital importance to the database, so as to have an on-line inflow and outflow and sharing of data and information. With this aim in view, efforts are underway to port the database from the Foxpro environment to the Oracle Client/Server environment, a far more powerful RDBMS, suitable both in terms of wide area networking and as an RDBMS, than the present Foxpro system. Oracle is being visualised as the stepping stone to the future needs of the database, and as being crucial for its survival in terms of database application, GIS application and networking.
Management of information on a countrywide basis and from such varied sources has not been easy, and inevitable gaps have appeared from time to time. Nevertheless, we have been able to 'Strengthen the National Wildlife Database' at many fronts and place it in the service of students, researchers, scientists, managers and planners as a valuable tool.