The Great Stag Hunt
The People’s Trust for Engangered Species have adopted one of the lesser known species covered by the UK government Bio-diversity Action Plan, the Stag Beetle. A large part of their conservation work involves estimating the current Stage Beetle population and their geographic disutribution.
In previous years, a printed form was supplied to volunteers and the results collated by post. In 2006, PTES decided it was time to make use of the web in order to supplement this activity and provide more opportunities for data capture.
I worked with Nida at PTES to design and build a small branded microsite under the campaign name “The Great Stag Hunt”. The key component of the site was an 3-step survey form that allowed vistors to record their sightings.
On top of this, we added a few interesting features to help get the most out of the data that was being captured.
A live “count” was displayed on the website of the number of sightings in order to provide some useful info to visitors and also as a simple incentive to add your own.
Taking advantage of the widespread use of digital photography, we asked survey particpants to upload any pictures they had of Stag Beetles to accompany their reponses. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this proved quite popular but what was unexpected was the quality of the images that were supplied. A simple gallery was set-up to showcase the images that had been sent in.
Update
In 2007, for the second annual survey, we refreshed the site and PTES ran a photography competition. The gallery from both the 200 and 2007 surveys now contains almost 1000 images of Stag Beetles submitted by website visitors.
Credits
Alex was invaluable as always, helping to code the survey forms and creating a simple data export tool that allowed PTES to collect the results whenever they wanted.