Wildlife Whisper

TerraHacks Hackathon Project

Purpose of Project The primary goal of this project is to report poachers and act as a third-party enforcer of endangered animal preservation. We aim to provide a user-friendly platform for people to report poaching incidents easily. This organization operates as a non-profit entity.

How It Works Our reporting system allows anonymous individuals to report sightings of poachers or dead animals, potentially victims of illegal hunting. The Google Maps API is integrated to mark the locations of these incidents using coordinates from dropped pins. Users can report incidents on the go, and the latitude and longitude coordinates, along with provided information, are uploaded to a SQL database. This database stores the information, including pictures and other incriminating evidence.

Vision We envision significant scalability for this project. With potential sponsorship from government bodies or organizations like WWF, we could offer incentives to people who report poaching incidents. While currently focused on Canada, this initiative could expand globally to countries such as China, Singapore, and Kenya, where poaching is a severe issue. Offering cash rewards could provide substantial motivation for citizens in these countries to report incidents. Additionally, government partnerships could facilitate the hiring of forest rangers to act on these reports and make arrests, thereby increasing the effectiveness of our efforts in poorer regions and potentially eradicating the problem. It could also strengthen communities and overall biodiversity of the ecosystem, which is a crucial part of saving the environment.

What We Learned Throughout this project, we gained extensive knowledge in various areas:

API Integration: We learned how to integrate APIs, read documentation, and work with advanced JavaScript topics. Web Development: We utilized NPM and Node.js for API integration and HTML and CSS to create an interactive and visually appealing website. Databases: We learned how databases interact with JavaScript to perform queries, using SQL and mySQL server to store data. Data Handling: We became proficient in importing JSON data and SVG data, despite the steep learning curve. Full-Stack Development: We successfully built a full-stack website within 24 hours with contributions from four team members. Areas for Improvement While the website is functional, there are areas for enhancement:

Visual Design: The overall visual appeal of the website could be improved. Professionalism: The contact page should be more professional. Automated Updates: We could implement a feature to automatically update SQL information on provinces based on the recorded coordinates, which we couldn't achieve within the time constraints.