TerraFit

TerraFit exists because the last step of wildlife rehabilitation, deciding where to actually release an animal, is often the least supported part of the process. Rehab centers put months of careful work into getting an animal healthy again, but choosing a release site frequently comes down to convenience or guesswork rather than real data about whether that location can actually support the animal. At the same time, once an animal is released, there's rarely any structured way to track whether it's adjusting well. We wanted to build something that closes both gaps at once.

TerraFit does this in three parts. Animal Intake lets rehab staff log a species, its ideal environmental conditions, and notes on its rehab progress. Site Finder takes a handful of candidate release locations and pulls live public weather and terrain data for each one, then scores them against that specific animal's needs, all without placing any new sensors or equipment out in the wild, since it works entirely from existing public data. Recovery Log tracks food and water intake before and after release, and automatically flags a pattern of missed meals so staff can catch a problem early instead of finding out too late.

We built it as a single self contained web app so it's easy to run, demo, and host anywhere without extra setup. Site Finder calls a free public weather and geocoding API directly in the browser to pull real current conditions, short-term forecasts, and elevation for any location typed in, and that data feeds into a scoring model built around the animal's specific ideal range rather than a generic score. Animal Intake and the Recovery Log are simpler forms by comparison, but with logic underneath that watches for concerning patterns automatically. We also put real effort into the design, since we wanted it to feel approachable for rehab staff rather than like a cold data tool.

The main challenge was that scoring suitability for a release site isn't an exact science, so we had to think carefully about which environmental factors actually matter to an animal's survival and how to weigh them without making the tool seem more precise or authoritative than it really is. We're proud that TerraFit runs on real, live environmental data instead of placeholder numbers, so its recommendations reflect actual current conditions. Building this also taught us that habitat suitability for wildlife release is a genuine, recognized concern in rehabilitation work, and that the tools available for it are often informal or entirely manual, which made this feel like a real gap worth addressing rather than something that already had a good solution.

Looking ahead, we'd want to bring in more environmental signals, like precipitation history, human population density, and known predator ranges, to make the scoring more robust. We'd also like to let multiple rehab centers share anonymized release outcomes over time, so the tool gets smarter about what actually works in practice, not just what looks reasonable on paper at the moment of release.