Every carer has these problems. Nobody has fixed them. Until now.
🌳 "Where do I find manna gum branches at 8pm on a Tuesday?"GPS nearest food tree. Navigate. Done.
🔥 "Nobody told me about the burn until the wombats started arriving."Burn alerts in your area — weeks ahead.
⚠ "Is that roadside safe to collect from or did they spray it?"Chemical treatment map — product, date, safe-from date.
🪓 "The arborist was done before I even knew there were animals in the tree."Arborist work order alerts — 48 hours before felling.
🏗 "That bush block near Boronia — when is it getting cleared?"Clearing permit notifications — before it happens.
📍 "I need a release site and I can't spend three hours driving to check it."Tap map — instant habitat, burn, chemical report.
📋 "I need someone else to do the browse run but they don't know what to look for."Printable volunteer sheet — tree ID, what to collect, what to leave.
🌱 "When does that species actually fruit in this area?"Phenology calendar — flowering and fruiting by species and region.
None of this requires you to enter data. None of it is visible to other carers.
It runs on government data that already exists — just never connected to you.
admin
Quick Actions
🌿
Browse & Habitat
Food trees, volunteer sheet, release sites
📍
Log Rescue
Species · location · cause — then tap map
🗺
Log Release
Species · location · habitat type

🏥 Log Rescue

👆 Tap anywhere on the map to set location automatically
Optional details — helps with browse planning and animal record

🌿 Log Release

Release location and habitat — shared with all carers for density monitoring. Prevents overcrowding of release zones. No care history shared.
👆 Tap map to set location. Release pressure for this species in this area will be checked automatically.
🔒 Shelter Privacy
Default: anonymous. Location and species always shared — that's what builds the density picture. Your shelter name is hidden unless you opt in.

👁 Log Sighting

🚨 Post Missing Alert

Alert appears on all team members' maps in real time

🌿 Browse & Habitat

Browse needed for your animals currently in care.
📍 Multiple locations per species · Botanical gardens excluded
Up to 3 nearest sources shown per food type. If one is locked or stripped, use the next alternative.

Animal Record

👤 Account & Profile

Your wildlife registration number is stored locally on this device and is never shared with the network without your permission.
HabiFood
Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitator Network · Victoria
Conditions of Use, Privacy & Access Controls
Please read and accept before accessing the HabiFood network
Who this platform is for
HabiFood is exclusively for individuals holding a current, active Victorian wildlife rehabilitation permit issued by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA). Access is verified against DEECA Wildlife Licensing records. Providing false credentials constitutes a breach of these conditions and may be reported to DEECA.
1. Eligibility & Access
1.1  Access to HabiFood is restricted to persons holding a current, active Victorian wildlife rehabilitation permit. You must provide your correct permit number at registration.
1.2  Your access is tied to the currency of your DEECA permit. If your permit expires, is suspended or is revoked, your HabiFood access will be updated accordingly. You will receive a 30-day data export window before access is removed.
1.3  Access codes are personal, non-transferable and may only be used by the permit holder to whom they were issued. Sharing access codes with others is a breach of these conditions.
1.4  HabiFood reserves the right to suspend or revoke access for breach of these conditions, misuse of data, or conduct that harms other users or wildlife outcomes.
1.5  HabiFood provides admin access controls to DEECA Wildlife Licensing for the purpose of permit verification and access management. HabiFood is independently owned and operated.
2. Permitted Use
2.1  HabiFood may only be used for legitimate wildlife rehabilitation activities, including locating native food sources, planning browse collection, assessing release sites, logging rescue and release records, and monitoring hazards affecting rehabilitation work.
2.2  You must not use HabiFood to profile, monitor, identify or judge the practices of other carers. The platform is designed to prevent this; attempts to circumvent these protections are a breach of these conditions.
2.3  You must not use HabiFood for commercial purposes, data harvesting, research without explicit written consent, or any purpose unrelated to licensed wildlife rehabilitation.
2.4  Data accessed through HabiFood — including government spatial data, vegetation layers, chemical treatment records and network density maps — may only be used for the purposes stated in section 2.1. It may not be exported, republished or shared outside the platform without permission from the relevant data custodian.
3. Privacy & Data Handling
3.1  What is shared with the network: Anonymous, gridded rescue density (species, cause, approximate location) and anonymous release density (species, habitat type, approximate location). Individual care methods, treatment duration, outcomes, shelter throughput and any data that identifies individual carer practice are never shared.
3.2  What stays private: Your exact rescue and release coordinates, animal care records, permit number, contact details, and any personal information you enter remain private to you and accessible only by you and the HabiFood administrator for platform operation purposes.
3.3  Sharing preferences: You control whether your shelter name appears on release records and whether you contribute to network density data. These toggles are available in My Shelter → Privacy & Sharing and are off by default.
3.4  DEECA Wildlife Licensing: DEECA holds admin access controls to verify permit status and manage access. DEECA does not have access to your individual animal care records, personal rescue logs or any care outcomes.
3.5  Data retention: Your data is retained for the duration of your access. Upon revocation you receive a 30-day window to export your records. After this window, your personal data is removed. Anonymous aggregate contributions to the network density map remain as they cannot be individually attributed.
3.6  Third-party data: HabiFood connects to government APIs (FFMVic, VicMap, EPA, Melbourne Urban Forest, iNaturalist). This data is governed by the terms of the relevant agency. HabiFood does not store copies of this data beyond what is temporarily cached for display.
3.7  Firebase: Animal records and account data are stored in Google Firebase (asia-southeast1 region). Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Firebase is governed by Google's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
4. Access Controls & Security
4.1  Your access code is single-use and bound to your licence number. It cannot be reused after initial activation.
4.2  You are responsible for keeping your device secure. HabiFood stores your credentials locally on your device. If your device is lost or stolen, notify the HabiFood administrator immediately to revoke access.
4.3  You must not attempt to access, modify or delete other users' data. Attempts to do so will result in immediate revocation and may be referred to DEECA and relevant authorities.
4.4  HabiFood implements gridding (location rounding) and aggregation to prevent identification of individual carers through pattern analysis. You must not attempt to reverse-engineer individual records from network density data.
5. Accuracy & Liability
5.1  Government data integrated in HabiFood — including planned burn information, chemical treatment records and vegetation layers — is sourced from authoritative agencies but may not always be current, complete or accurate. Always verify safety-critical information (particularly chemical treatment and baiting zone data) with the relevant agency before collecting browse or releasing animals.
5.2  HabiFood does not guarantee the accuracy, currency or completeness of any data displayed. The platform is a decision-support tool, not a substitute for professional veterinary or wildlife management advice.
5.3  Totally Untamed Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation and the HabiFood platform accept no liability for decisions made on the basis of data displayed in HabiFood, including browse collection, release site selection, or hazard assessment decisions.
6. Intellectual Property
6.1  HabiFood, including its name, design, code, species database and data integration framework, is an original work owned by Totally Untamed Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation. It is protected under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Trade mark application pending — IP Australia (Classes 42 & 45).
6.2  You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, modify or create derivative works from any part of HabiFood without explicit written permission.
6.3  Government data accessed through HabiFood remains the intellectual property of the relevant agency and is subject to that agency's licence terms.
7. Sector Conduct
7.1  HabiFood is designed to serve all licensed Victorian wildlife rehabilitators regardless of organisational affiliation. You agree not to use the platform in a way that disadvantages, targets or disparages other carers or organisations.
7.2  Data contributed to the network is provided to benefit all carers. Using network data to identify, monitor or gain competitive advantage over other carers is a breach of these conditions.
7.3  HabiFood is a tool for wildlife outcomes. The animals in care are the priority. Conduct that compromises wildlife welfare through misuse of this platform will not be tolerated.
HabiFood · Totally Untamed Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation · Hampton Park, Victoria
Admin access controls provided to DEECA Wildlife Licensing · Restricted to current active permit holders
© Copyright 2024–2025. Trade mark application pending — IP Australia.
Questions: contact the HabiFood administrator via the platform feedback form.
HabiFood
Conditions of Use · Privacy Policy · Access Rules
Please read these conditions carefully before using HabiFood. By logging in you agree to these terms.
1. About HabiFood

HabiFood is an independently owned and operated platform developed by Totally Untamed Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation, Hampton Park, Victoria. HabiFood is not administered by any government agency. DEECA Wildlife Licensing is provided admin access controls for the sole purpose of verifying and managing current active wildlife rehabilitation permit holders.

HabiFood is protected under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Trade mark application pending with IP Australia (Classes 42 and 45). Unauthorised reproduction of the platform, its code, design, or data structures is prohibited.

2. Eligibility & Access

Access to HabiFood is restricted to individuals who hold a current, active wildlife rehabilitation permit issued by DEECA Wildlife Licensing (Victoria). Access is granted by the platform administrator following verification of permit status. Access codes are:

  • Personal and non-transferable
  • Valid only for the permit holder named on the account
  • Tied to a current, unexpired DEECA wildlife rehabilitation permit
  • Revocable immediately upon permit expiry, suspension or revocation
  • Not to be shared with any other person under any circumstances

Applications from persons who do not hold a current DEECA permit will not be approved. Permit expiry or revocation results in automatic access suspension. Former permit holders retain a 30-day window to export their personal records before access is removed.

3. Permitted Use

HabiFood may be used only for the following purposes by current active permit holders:

  • Planning and executing native food tree collection for wildlife in rehabilitation
  • Assessing potential wildlife release sites
  • Receiving alerts about burns, chemical treatments, and land clearing events
  • Logging rescue, release and sighting records for personal shelter management
  • Generating volunteer collection run sheets for browse sourcing
  • Reporting field issues to relevant authorities via integrated reporting tools

Any use beyond these purposes — including commercial use, data mining, systematic extraction, or use for any purpose unrelated to licensed wildlife rehabilitation — is strictly prohibited.

4. Privacy & Data Handling

HabiFood collects and handles data in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). By using HabiFood you consent to the following data practices:

4.1 Data you provide
  • Account data — name, shelter, DEECA permit number, contact email and operating region. Used for access verification and account management only.
  • Animal records — species, rescue date, location, cause, condition, weight, sex, age and release information. Stored privately unless you opt in to density sharing (see 4.2).
  • Browse preferences and notes — stored on your device only. Not shared with the network under any circumstances.
4.2 What is shared with the network (opt-in)

The following information may be shared anonymously with the broader HabiFood network only if you explicitly opt in via your Privacy & Sharing settings. You may change these preferences at any time:

  • Rescue density data — species, cause and gridded location (rounded to ~1km²). Your exact rescue address is never shared.
  • Release density data — species, habitat type and gridded location. Your exact release coordinates are never shared unless you opt in to named shelter attribution.
  • Shelter name attribution — your shelter name may appear alongside your release location data if you enable this option. This is off by default.
4.3 What is never shared
  • Individual animal care methods, treatment records or outcomes
  • Duration of care for any individual animal
  • Shelter throughput, capacity or daily workflow
  • Your exact rescue or release coordinates without your explicit consent
  • Any information that could be used to profile, compare or judge individual carer practice
  • Your contact information to other carers or third parties
4.4 Government and admin access

DEECA Wildlife Licensing is provided admin access controls for the purpose of permit verification, account approval and access management. DEECA does not have access to your individual animal care records, browse notes, or any data beyond what is required for permit administration.

HabiFood may provide aggregate, de-identified summary data to government agencies (rescue density by species and region, release outcomes by habitat type) for the purpose of establishing data partnerships. No individual carer data is included in these summaries.

5. Government & Third-Party Data

HabiFood integrates data from government and third-party sources including FFMVic, DEECA, VicMap, Melbourne City Council Urban Forest, and iNaturalist. This data is provided for informational purposes only. HabiFood does not guarantee the accuracy, currency or completeness of any external data source.

Chemical treatment data, planned burn boundaries, arborist work orders and clearing notices are derived from government systems and may not reflect real-time conditions. Always exercise independent judgement when assessing the safety of any collection or release location. HabiFood accepts no liability for any harm arising from reliance on data displayed in the platform.

6. Acceptable Behaviour

HabiFood operates in a sector with known interpersonal tensions. The following are strictly prohibited and will result in immediate access revocation without notice:

  • Attempting to identify, profile or surveil another carer's animals, location or practice through platform data
  • Using platform data to make complaints or allegations against other carers to any agency or organisation
  • Sharing access codes, account credentials or platform data with unauthorised persons
  • Attempting to access, extract or replicate platform data beyond normal use
  • Using the platform feedback or reporting systems to make vexatious, misleading or harassing reports
  • Any conduct that undermines the trust, safety or availability of the platform for other users
7. Limitation of Liability

HabiFood is provided as a community tool to support licensed wildlife rehabilitators. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Totally Untamed Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation accepts no liability for:

  • Any decision made in reliance on data, alerts or information displayed in the platform
  • Any harm to wildlife, carers or third parties arising from the use of platform features
  • Any loss of data arising from account suspension, revocation or technical failure
  • Any interruption, delay or unavailability of platform services
8. Changes to These Terms

These conditions may be updated from time to time. Registered users will be notified of material changes. Continued use of HabiFood after notification of changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

9. Contact & Complaints

Questions, privacy complaints or access concerns may be directed to the HabiFood platform administrator via the feedback form within the platform. Privacy complaints that cannot be resolved directly may be referred to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

HabiFood · Totally Untamed Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation · Hampton Park, Victoria
© 2025 All rights reserved · Trade mark pending · IP Australia Classes 42 & 45
These conditions govern access to HabiFood as at the date of your account approval.

⚠ Report an Issue

Spotted a problem in the field? Get your location then choose a category — opens directly in Snap Send Solve or your council's reporting portal, with coordinates pre-filled.
📍 Tap below to get your current location
🗑
Illegal Dumping / Rubbish
Dumped waste, littering, fly-tipping near habitat
🌳
Damaged / Destroyed Vegetation
Unauthorised clearing, ringbarking, tree damage
🚧
Damaged Infrastructure
Broken fencing, damaged wildlife crossings, hazards
💧
Water / Drainage Issue
Pollution, blocked waterway, contaminated runoff
🎨
Graffiti / Vandalism
Damage to public land or wildlife infrastructure
⚡
Safety Hazard
Fallen powerlines, unstable trees, exposed wiring
🕸
Dangerous Netting / Barbed Wire
Unsecured nets, loose barbed wire — wildlife entanglement risk
☠
Suspected Illegal Chemical Use
Unauthorised spraying, dead vegetation, chemical smell
🔗 Also report directly
Some issues are better reported directly to the relevant authority:
📱
Snap Send Solve
Reports go directly to the responsible council or agency
 🏭
EPA Victoria — Report It
Pollution, contamination, illegal waste disposal
 🔥
FFMVic — Report a Fire or Hazard
Unplanned burns, hazardous trees in state forest
 🌲
DEECA — Report Illegal Clearing
Unauthorised native vegetation removal

Event

📍
View on map →
Expected species / browse impact
Prepare now
🔔 Remind Me
Reminder appears on your dashboard on the chosen date. Useful for setting a "start collecting supplies" date before a burn or clearing event.

ℹ️ About HabiFood

Mission Statement
"The right information, at the right time, for the people who do the actual work — so the work is worth doing for the rest of their lives."
HabiFood exists to reduce the hidden costs — in time, money, and human welfare — that make wildlife rehabilitation in Australia unsustainable for the volunteers who carry almost all of it.

🌿 Why this platform exists

Wildlife rehabilitation in Victoria is carried out overwhelmingly by licensed volunteers who fund rescues from their own income, run full-time shelters alongside full-time jobs, and have almost no shared infrastructure. The result is a system where individual carers spend hours driving to find a single species of gum tree — a task that, with access to the right data, should take seconds.

Natural food sourcing is so labour-intensive that carers keep their knowledge private — not out of malice, but because finding a reliable patch of Eucalyptus viminalis near a possum release site is genuinely hard, and sharing it feels like giving away a scarce resource. This hoarding is rational at the individual level and catastrophic at the sector level.

The human cost is not discussed publicly because carers don't stop to discuss it — they're too busy. A planned burn happens Tuesday. Nobody told the carers. The wombats and wallabies arrive Friday. The carer cancels a family event they'd had for three months. Again. The animals in care that week don't get walked because there's no time. The relationship that was already under strain takes another hit. This is not an edge case. This is the operational reality for the majority of active rehabilitators in Victoria — and it is the primary reason experienced carers leave the sector. Not the animals. Not the emotional weight. The inability to plan anything, because the information that would allow planning is sitting in a council works system, a DEECA permit database, or an FFMVic burn schedule — and no one has ever connected it to the people who need it.

Meanwhile, carers from different organisations don't communicate. Release sites get quietly overcrowded. Animals from the same road accident get reported to three different agencies. Planned burns and habitat clearing near release sites go unnoticed until animals are already there. None of this is anyone's fault — there has simply never been a shared platform.

HabiFood is that platform.

🎯 What HabiFood is — and what it deliberately isn't

Wildlife rehabilitation databases already exist. Teams have built them, organisations have tried to maintain them, and the pattern is always the same: the daily data entry requirement — condition scores, treatment logs, weight records, feeding notes — doesn't survive contact with the reality of running a shelter while working full time. The data goes stale, the system gets abandoned, and carers go back to notebooks and memory.

HabiFood doesn't try to fix that problem. It solves a different one — the one nobody has touched. The browse. The habitat. The government data that directly affects both. The volunteer collection sheet that means the carer doesn't have to do every single run themselves. The burn warning that arrives before the animals do. The release site assessment that doesn't require a site visit. None of that exists anywhere else. That's this.
HabiFood works alongside existing wildlife management systems — it doesn't replace them. For carers who use WIRES, WildlifeTracker, or other databases for their care records, HabiFood is the layer those systems don't have: food, habitat, and what's about to happen in your area.
1 · Find browse and assess release sites without leaving the shelter
GPS-locate the nearest food tree for any species, generate a printable volunteer collection sheet, assess a release site from a map tap. None of this requires another carer's data — it runs on government tree registers, vegetation mapping, and EVC species metadata.
2 · Know what's coming before it arrives
Planned burn in 9 days means a surge of wombats in 2 weeks. Council spraying a roadside on Tuesday means that eucalyptus patch is off-limits for 6 weeks. A clearing permit approved last month means that habitat is gone before the animals know it. HabiFood surfaces this from government data automatically — no carer entry required.
3 · Two data points that require almost nothing from carers
When a carer logs a rescue — species, suburb, cause, date, 30 seconds — it builds a shared density map that shows every carer in the network where animals are being found and why. When they log a release — species, location, habitat — it prevents invisible overcrowding of the same release zones by carers who don't know each other. These two minimal entries, done once and never updated, are the only carer contribution the network needs to function.

⚖️ What this platform is NOT for

❌ General public access or crowd-sourced data
❌ Research not directly connected to active rehabilitation
❌ Population density claims beyond what vegetation structure allows
❌ Modelling beyond what the EVC framework already encodes
❌ Commercial use or data resale of any kind
❌ Advocacy, lobbying, or any purpose other than direct animal care

📡 Data sources

VicMap AdminLGA boundaries, CFA districts — Dept. Transport & Planning
VicMap VegetationUrban tree canopy — Dept. Transport & Planning
VicMap PlanningBushfire prone areas, ESO overlays, UGB — DTP
VicMap HydroWaterways — Dept. Transport & Planning
Melbourne Urban Forest80,000+ trees with species data — City of Melbourne
FFMVic Planned BurnsPlanned burn polygons — Forest Fire Management Victoria
iNaturalistResearch-grade wildlife observations — iNaturalist.org
EVC Species MetadataCanopy species by Ecological Vegetation Class — DEECA

🔒 Privacy by design — the non-negotiable

What is never shared with other carers
❌ How long an individual animal is in care
❌ Care methods, feeding protocols, or treatment approaches
❌ Individual animal outcomes
❌ Shelter throughput, capacity, or activity level
❌ Any data that describes how a specific carer operates

This isn't a technical limitation — it's a deliberate design decision. The wildlife rehabilitation sector carries structural tensions between carers, organisations, and agencies. Data that profiles individual practice can be used with malicious intent regardless of how it was intended. HabiFood does not provide those tools. It never will.

What is shared — and why it's safe
✅ Rescue density — species, approximate location, cause. Nobody knows who logged it.
✅ Release density — species, location grid, habitat type. Nobody knows whose animal it was.
✅ Browse stage — private to the carer only. Never leaves your device.
✅ Government data — burns, chemicals, clearings. Nobody logged it — it flows automatically.

The two shared data points — rescue and release density — are anonymous by default, location-gridded (not exact address), and contain nothing about the carer. What they build, in aggregate, is a picture of where animals are and where they're going that benefits every carer in the network equally — including the ones who contributed nothing.

🔬 Methods and limitations

Food tree suitability is derived strictly from EVC dominant canopy species metadata and documented foraging ecology of each species. No habitat modelling is applied beyond what the EVC framework already encodes. No claims are made about wildlife population density beyond what vegetation structure allows. No Atlas of Living Australia data is used.

Release site suitability indicators (over-release pressure, planned burn proximity, development overlays) are informational starting points only. Decisions about individual animal releases remain the responsibility of the licensed rehabilitator.

🧑‍⚕️ Carer Sustainability — the platform's fourth purpose

The three operational purposes of HabiFood — food sourcing, release success, and sector co-operation — have a fourth underlying purpose that is never stated anywhere because wildlife rehabilitation has never had a platform to state it: keeping the people sustainable.

Victoria's licensed wildlife rehabilitation sector is carried by a small number of highly skilled volunteers who fund their own operations, provide care that would cost the public health system thousands of dollars per animal if it had to be formalised, and receive almost no systemic support in return. The average active rehabilitator operates a shelter at personal expense while maintaining employment. The cost — financial, physical, and relational — is not sustainable at scale, and the evidence is in the attrition rate: experienced carers leave, new carers don't stay, and the animals who would have been saved by the people who burned out are the silent statistic that no data system currently captures.

HabiFood cannot solve the funding problem. It cannot reduce the emotional weight of intensive care for injured animals. What it can do is remove the operational friction — the hours of reactive scrambling, the midnight food runs, the family events cancelled because a burn nobody announced generated thirty rescues overnight — and return that time and predictability to carers as a resource they can use to remain in the sector for the long term.

The animals need these people. The information exists to support them better. This platform connects the two.

⚖️ Intellectual Property & Governance

HabiFood is an original work protected under Australian copyright law (Copyright Act 1968) from the date of creation. The platform name, logo, database schema, and methodology are proprietary. Trade mark registration is in progress with IP Australia (Class 42 and Class 45). Access is restricted to current, active wildlife rehabilitation permit holders. HabiFood provides admin access controls to DEECA Wildlife Licensing for permit verification and account management. The platform is not affiliated with any wildlife organisation, agency, or government department.

Totally Untamed Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation
Founded by Totally Untamed Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation
Hampton Park, Victoria
HabiFood v1.0 Beta · Victoria, Australia
HabiFood provides admin access controls to DEECA Wildlife Licensing for restricted use by current active permit holders · Built for the carers who make it possible

📡 Data Partnerships & Gaps

What we're asking — and why it costs nothing
Read-only live access to data that already exists, is already collected, and already sits in a database somewhere. Not what — only what and where. No personal data. No new staff work. One technical connection. Permanent benefit to wildlife and to the agencies whose job it is to protect them.
⚠ The problem carers face right now
A carer drives to a patch of eucalypts they know. Cuts branches for the possums. Goes home. The council sprayed that roadside last Tuesday with metsulfuron-methyl — withholding period: 6 weeks. The carer had no way to know. The council has a complete spray record sitting in their works management system — required by law under the Pesticides Act 1994 (Vic). It just isn't linked to anything that helps.
Council Pesticide Use Registers — roadside, parks, drains
All 79 Victorian LGAs · Pesticides Act 1994 (Vic) compliance records
Under the Pesticides Act 1994, every organisation using pesticides commercially is legally required to keep records of: product name, active ingredient, location, date, application rate, and re-entry interval. Every council already has this data — it's generated as part of their normal works management workflow. It just isn't shared. A spatial API feed from each council's works management system would allow HabiFood to show carers in real time: this area was sprayed, with this product, on this date, and it is safe to collect from again on this date.
Request: Chemical product name, active ingredient, treatment polygon/line, application date, re-entry interval (days). Automated feed from existing works management systems (Confirm, Assetic, Conquest, or equivalent). No staff names, contractor details, or cost data needed.
The safe harvest date is a calculation, not a judgement: Application date + re-entry interval = safe from date. This is objective, legal, and already determined by the product label. HabiFood just needs the input data to display it spatially.
VicRoads / DTP Roadside Chemical Treatment Records
Department of Transport & Planning · VicRoads contractors
State highways and arterials are sprayed extensively for weed control — particularly in late winter/spring. Roadsides contain some of the only remnant native food trees in many agricultural landscapes. Roadside spraying affects food trees, adjacent native vegetation, and soil invertebrates (critical for bandicoots, echidnas, wombats). This data is recorded in contractor delivery reports already submitted to DTP.
Request: Treatment section (road + chainage or polygon), product, active ingredient, date, re-entry interval. From existing contractor reporting systems — no new data collection.
Energy Distributor Vegetation Chemical Management
AusNet Services · Powercor · United Energy · CitiPower · Jemena
Electricity easements are extensively chemically treated to prevent regrowth under and adjacent to power lines. The vegetation adjacent to these easements often contains mature food trees, and treatments can affect these through soil uptake, drift, and runoff. Distributors maintain detailed treatment records for safety compliance — the spatial data exists.
Request: Treatment corridor polygon, chemical product, date, re-entry interval. From existing safety and compliance reporting.
Parks Victoria & DEECA Chemical Use in Managed Areas
Parks Victoria · Forest Fire Management Victoria · DEECA
National parks, state forests and regional parks are primary release destinations and food collection sites. Both Parks Victoria and FFMVic conduct extensive weed control programs using herbicides. Release sites in these areas that have been recently treated are currently invisible to carers. Some of these chemicals (e.g. imazapyr, picloram) have very long soil persistence and affect native species indirectly.
Request: Treatment polygon, product, date, re-entry interval. Integration with existing FFIMS (Fire and Fuel Information Management System) or Parks Victoria asset management records.
1080, Pindone & Compound 1080 Baiting Programs
DEECA · Parks Victoria · LandVic · Private land manager programmes
Sodium fluoroacetate (1080) and pindone baiting programs for rabbits, foxes, and wild dogs create secondary poisoning risk for native predators and scavengers — including raptors, quolls, and Tasmanian devils in relevant zones. Active baiting exclusion zones are maintained by DEECA but not spatially accessible to carers. An animal arriving injured near a baiting zone needs a different triage protocol than a standard rescue.
Request: Baiting zone polygons, bait type, start and end dates. Already notified to WorkSafe and local shires — spatial sharing adds no overhead.
Rail Corridor Chemical Management
VicTrack · Metro Trains Melbourne · V/Line · Regional Rail
Railway corridors are chemically treated extensively for weed control, particularly under tracks and on ballast. Corridor-adjacent vegetation — often the oldest remnant native vegetation in urbanised areas — is affected by soil-active herbicides that move laterally. Carers collecting from native vegetation adjacent to rail corridors have no visibility of these treatments.
Request: Treatment section, chemical product, active ingredient, date, re-entry/safety interval. From existing contractor compliance records.
CMA & Weed Management Group Programs
10 Victorian CMAs · Regional Weed Management Groups
CMAs co-ordinate landscape-scale weed control programs covering hundreds of thousands of hectares. These programs are planned months in advance, spatially mapped for contractor deployment, and tracked for compliance reporting. The spatial treatment records already exist in each CMA's GIS system. These are also frequently in riparian zones — exactly where carers collect from and release into.
Request: Treatment polygon, herbicide product, active ingredient, application date, re-entry interval. From existing CMA GIS and project management systems.
Blue-Green Algae / Cyanobacteria Alerts
EPA Victoria · Melbourne Water · CMAs · Water authorities
Blue-green algae blooms produce hepatotoxins and neurotoxins that are fatal to many wildlife species within hours of exposure. Animals drinking from or being released near affected waterways are at acute risk. EPA and water authorities already publish algae alerts — but not in a format that reaches carers making release decisions near waterways in real time.
Request: Alert polygon or waterbody name, toxin type if known, alert date, clearance date. EPA already publishes a public alert list — requesting spatial API integration of existing data.
EPA Site Contamination Register — near food collection zones
EPA Victoria
Historically contaminated sites (former industrial land, landfills, petrol stations) can leach heavy metals, PFAS, and other persistent compounds into adjacent soil and vegetation for decades after remediation. Native vegetation growing on or adjacent to contaminated sites can bioaccumulate these compounds — and animals fed that vegetation, or released onto that land, face chronic health risks invisible to carers.
Request: Site boundary polygon, contamination type (general category — heavy metals, PFAS, hydrocarbons etc.), remediation status. Already published by EPA in a search tool — requesting spatial API access to existing public data.
PFAS Contamination Zones
PFAS National Environmental Management Plan · DCCEEW · DEECA · EPA
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from firefighting foams at airports, military bases, and fire stations have contaminated significant areas of vegetation, soil, and groundwater across Victoria. Wildlife feeding from PFAS-affected vegetation bioaccumulate these compounds — animals released into PFAS zones will re-expose. Current contamination mapping is fragmented across federal, state and local records.
Request: Known contamination extent polygons. Federal PFAS investigation sites are already publicly listed — requesting spatial layer access.
📄 Download Agency Briefing Document
A print-ready briefing suitable for sending to any agency. Covers every dataset, the technical format needed, what HabiFood returns to the agency, and why the connection costs nothing.

📖 How to Use HabiFood

🌳 Finding browse for your animals
1. Tap Browse Planning from the dashboard or sidebar
2. Search a species — all food sources appear with category icons
3. Tap 📍 Find next to any food source → map shows nearest tree with directions
4. Use 📋 Volunteer Task tab to generate a printable collection sheet for someone else to do the run
📍 Logging a rescue
1. Tap ＋ in the topbar → Log Rescue
2. Tap the map to set the rescue location automatically
3. Select species and cause — tap Save
4. The rescue appears as an orange dot on the network map (anonymous, gridded)
🗺 Tapping the map
Tap anywhere on the map → a popup appears with actions for that location:
• Log Rescue / Release / Sighting here
• Assess as a release site
• Save to browse collection run
• Report an issue (Snap Send Solve)
🌿 Browse stages — updating as animals progress
In My Shelter → My Animals, each animal shows its current browse stage. Tap → Next Stage as the animal progresses — the Browse & Habitat Management tool and Volunteer Sheet update automatically.

🍼 Formula → 🌱 Transitioning → 🌿 Browse Primary → 🦘 Pre-release
⚠ Checking alerts before you collect
Check Alerts & Hazards before any browse collection trip. Planned burns, upcoming clearing events and (when connected) chemical treatment records all appear here. The ⚠ button in the topbar shows a count of active alerts.
📋 Volunteer Browse Run Sheet
1. Go to Browse Planning → 📋 Volunteer Task
2. Adjust animal counts with ＋/− buttons
3. Tap Build Run Sheet → quantities calculated, locations found, route ordered
4. Tap 🖨 Print → save as PDF → share by message to any volunteer
Each stop shows: address, how many to collect, tree identification, what to avoid
🔐 Admin access
Go to My Shelter → Admin Panel. Enter your PIN to unlock. From there: approve applications, generate 6-character access codes for new carers, view all feedback, revoke or reinstate access.

💬 Give Feedback

🔐 Admin Panel

Enter your admin PIN to access the HabiFood Admin Panel.