The reporting flow
One observation, a few careful checks.
Sign in and start at the sighting
Community reports belong to verified, signed-in accounts. Starting the reporting flow captures the best available device position early, while the observer is still safely stopped at the sighting.
Name what you saw
Search by common or local name, browse a broad group, or use the guided identifier. Automatic photo and text hints offer candidates only; a person must confirm the species before the report is treated as identified.
Keep the evidence with the report
The report stores its time and the best available GPS accuracy. A photo, audio clip or field note can support review. Original evidence is not made a public location record simply because it was attached.
Check for the same encounter
Before creating another public point, the service checks shared reports for the same species near the captured location. A cross-user match reinforces or updates that encounter and adds the observer's contribution to My Wild, rather than scattering duplicate public pins across the map.
Share only what is safe
Eligible, non-sensitive sightings can appear to signed-in visitors on the reserve map. Exact positions for protected or sensitive species are withheld from that shared view, even when the underlying report contains accurate GPS.
Freshness
Live until somebody there says “not there”.
A shared sighting stays live until a signed-in visitor reaches the location and confirms that the animal is no longer there. A positive confirmation can refresh the encounter; a “not there” confirmation retires it from the live view. The observer still keeps the historical record in My Wild.
Animals move, visibility changes and GPS has uncertainty. Always obey reserve rules, road access, staff instructions and safe viewing distances.
Weak or missing signal
Reports can wait safely for a connection.
When the web app and the necessary reserve information have already been loaded, a field report can be saved into an on-device offline queue. Its captured time, location, selected species and evidence stay with it. The queue syncs after a connection returns, and the server then performs the normal matching and safety checks.
Opening a reserve for the first time, downloading information or signing in still needs connectivity. Prepare before the gate using the offline safari guide and keep a paper or official-map fallback.
Imported community reports
An import is a review queue, not an automatic publication.
Approved WhatsApp-group exports can be read locally in the Control Centre to prepare candidate sightings. Names, phone numbers and raw chat messages are not uploaded as public content. Each candidate needs a species, original time, reserve and defensible placement, and every pin is reviewed by the owner before publication.
Ambiguous road descriptions, missing locations, uncertain species and out-of-range coordinates are held for correction instead of being forced onto the public map.
What other visitors see
Shared discovery without a public trail of private data.
Visible when appropriate
Confirmed non-sensitive species, an appropriate map point, report freshness and useful evidence can support the shared reserve view.
Kept personal
Account identity, private history, raw imports and evidence that could expose a person or sensitive location stay outside the public knowledge pages.
Location protected
Sensitive-species records may remain in a protected owner view while the member map shows no exact position at all.
History retained
Retiring a live point does not erase the observer's personal wildlife record or the audit trail needed to assess the report.
Important limits
What a sighting can—and cannot—tell you.
- A map point marks the observer's or camera's reported position. It is not a promise that the animal is standing on that exact pixel.
- Two nearby reports can be associated as the same encounter, but proximity alone cannot prove that they concern the same individual animal.
- A sequence of reports can support a movement hypothesis. It is not a collar track, a verified route or proof of an animal's movement.
- Automated identification, duplicate checks and coordinate estimates can be wrong. Human confirmation and review remain necessary.
- No sighting is guaranteed. Habitat, weather, behaviour, traffic and observer effort all affect what is reported and what can be seen.