⚠ 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 Habi-Food 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. Habi-Food 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.
EVC Polygons — Dominant Canopy Species Metadata
DEECA · NatureKit / Datashare
The single highest-value vegetation dataset. Identifies which species structurally dominate every vegetation polygon across Victoria — directly encoding food tree presence without individual tree surveys. Currently behind Datashare login. WMS or API access enables automatic food suitability mapping for any release location in Victoria.
Request: WMS or ArcGIS FeatureServer — EVC_MODELLED_EXTENT and EVC_BIOREGION layers. No personal data.
Flora Information System (FIS) — historical vegetation records
DEECA · Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
Decades of systematic botanical surveys recorded at site level. FIS records include species presence, cover, condition, and survey date — directly informing whether a location is likely to still support specific food species today. A 1km² aggregate read would provide baseline food tree presence by location without exposing sensitive rare plant sites.
Request: Aggregate species presence by 1km² grid. No individual survey site coordinates for sensitive taxa.
Roadside Vegetation Inventory
Dept. Transport & Planning
Roadsides are the last remnant native vegetation in many cleared landscapes — and the same roads generating the bulk of vehicle-strike rescues. Vegetation type by road segment allows carers to identify food patches near rescue sites for same-night release assessment.
Request: Vegetation type by road segment. No ownership or maintenance scheduling data needed.
Council Street Tree Registers — all 79 Victorian LGAs
Individual LGAs · Local Government Victoria
Melbourne's Urban Forest dataset demonstrates what's possible: 80,000+ trees, species, GPS, canopy size, age — fully integrated in Habi-Food. Every other LGA holds identical data. Species + GPS only.
Request: Scientific species name + GPS coordinates. Via Victorian Open Data Portal or individual ArcGIS services.
CMA Revegetation Databases — all 10 CMAs
NCCMA · Port Phillip & Westernport CMA · Goulburn Broken CMA · West Gippsland CMA · East Gippsland CMA · Corangamite CMA · North East CMA · Mallee CMA · Wimmera CMA · Glenelg Hopkins CMA
Hundreds of thousands of native plantings mapped over 20+ years, maturing now into viable food and habitat. Unknown to carers.
Request: Planting centroids, dominant species, year planted, estimated canopy closure. No landholder names.
Parks Victoria Vegetation Monitoring & Condition Data
Parks Victoria
Primary release destinations. Parks Vic holds condition assessments, weed pressure maps, and long-term plot data. Access allows carers to assess food availability at release sites without a site visit — critical for night-time releases.
Request: Vegetation condition scores by polygon, dominant species, weed threats. Read-only WMS.
Melbourne Water Riparian Revegetation Sites
Melbourne Water
Thousands of hectares of fenced, managed riparian land containing maturing native plantings — preferred habitat for ringtail possums, bandicoots, and waterway-adjacent species. Unknown as release locations.
Request: Site boundaries and dominant species planted. No access management or security information.
BOM / CSIRO Phenological Calendar — Native species flowering & fruiting
Bureau of Meteorology · CSIRO
When does each species flower and fruit, by climate zone? Turns food sourcing from guesswork to a calendar. Enables 5-year food production planning. The most under-used dataset in the sector.
Request: Onset and duration of flowering/fruiting by species and climate zone. Historical records or API. No location-sensitive data.
Remote Sensing Canopy Health & Stress Indices
DEECA · CSIRO · Geoscience Australia
Satellite-derived vegetation indices (NDVI, EVI) show canopy stress, drought impact, and die-back at regular intervals. An area flagged for poor canopy health is also a poor food source — and an early indicator that wildlife in that area may need supplemental support. This data is produced routinely from Sentinel-2 and Landsat as government-funded analysis.
Request: NDVI anomaly polygons at monthly intervals, by vegetation community type. Already produced for drought monitoring — requesting spatial feed of existing outputs.
Plant Disease Mapping — Phytophthora, Myrtle Rust, Dieback
DEECA · Agriculture Victoria · Plant Health Australia
Phytophthora cinnamomi (root rot dieback) affects hundreds of Victorian plant species including banksias, grasstrees, and proteaceous understorey — critical food species for many wildlife. Myrtle rust affects the entire Myrtaceae family including all eucalypts, melaleucas, and paperbarks. Disease-affected areas may be unsafe for food collection and wildlife release regardless of chemical treatment status.
Request: Known disease extent polygons, pathogen type, survey date. No private land details required.
VicTrack Rail Corridor Native Vegetation
VicTrack
Railway corridors contain some of the oldest remnant native vegetation in peri-urban Victoria — protected from development, continuous, but largely unmapped as habitat or food sources.
Request: Corridor land parcels with vegetation condition classification. No operational or security data.
Herbarium Victoria Specimen Records — historic plant distribution
Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
Historic herbarium specimens show where food species occurred before clearing — allowing prediction of where remnant populations may persist, and where revegetation with appropriate species would most benefit wildlife.
Request: Aggregate species occurrence by 10km² grid. Already available via AVH — requesting direct RBGV API access to avoid ALA intermediary.
Native Vegetation Removal Approvals Register
DEECA · Native Vegetation Regulation
Every permit to remove native vegetation is spatially recorded. Approved removals — past and upcoming — allow Habi-Food to flag release sites where adjacent food trees are legally scheduled for clearing. Carers currently discover this when chainsaws arrive.
Request: Removal polygon, vegetation type, approval date. No applicant names or property details.
Native Vegetation Offsets Register
DEECA · BioBanking / Habitat Connectivity
Offsets — plantings required to compensate for approved clearing — create new habitat over time. Their locations are recorded but not spatially accessible. These will become food and release sites within 5–10 years.
Request: Offset site polygons, dominant species, establishment year, expected canopy closure. No landholder details.
Development Applications with Native Vegetation Conditions
All 79 Victorian LGAs · VCAT · Planning Victoria
DAs affecting native vegetation near rescue hotspots or release sites are invisible to carers until construction begins. Early spatial notification — 60 days — allows proactive food harvesting before habitat is lost.
Request: DA polygon or centroid within 500m of known wildlife areas, lodgement date, native vegetation impact description. No applicant details.
Subdivision Planning — Green Wedge & Urban Fringe
DELWP / Planning Victoria · LGAs
Urban fringe subdivision progressively removes the movement corridors and food tree patches that connect rehabilitated animals to viable habitat. Early visibility of rezoning decisions in wildlife-dense postcodes enables evidence-based submissions using Habi-Food rescue data.
Request: Rezoning application polygons with timing. No ownership data.
Infrastructure Project Vegetation Clearing Schedules
Development Victoria · Major Road Projects Victoria · Rail Projects Victoria
Large infrastructure projects clear significant areas of native vegetation on known timelines. Pre-clearing rescue staging — placing carers ready to rescue displaced animals before clearing begins — is only possible with advance spatial and temporal notice. This information is publicly available in EES documents but not in a spatial, time-indexed format.
Request: Clearing polygon, scheduled clearing date range. Already in approved EES documents — requesting structured spatial extraction.
Biodiversity Sensitivity Mapping
DEECA
DEECA's Biodiversity Sensitivity mapping identifies areas of highest ecological value for strategic planning. Integrating this layer with Habi-Food would allow carers to prioritise releases into high-sensitivity, high-habitat-value areas and avoid inadvertently releasing into areas flagged as low-value or degraded.
Request: Sensitivity rating polygons. Already partially published via NatureKit — requesting API access.
FFMVic Historical Fire History — burned extent & severity
Forest Fire Management Victoria · DEECA
Post-fire vegetation recovery follows a predictable trajectory — understorey flush 6–18 months, canopy recovery 3–7 years. Knowing the fire history at a release site tells a carer whether food resources are in early recovery, peak productivity, or senescent phase. Currently: planned burns only integrated. Missing: fire history polygons with severity ratings.
Request: Historical fire perimeter polygons, date, fire severity rating. Already on DEECA DataVic — requesting WMS or REST endpoint.
CFA Historical Burn Records
Country Fire Authority
CFA suppression burns and burn-overs in peri-urban areas are not captured in FFMVic data but affect the same release zones used by carers in Melbourne's outer east, Mornington Peninsula, and Bellarine.
Request: Burn perimeter, date, approximate severity. GeoJSON or WMS.
Post-Fire Vegetation Recovery Assessments
Arthur Rylah Institute · DEECA
ARI conducts systematic post-fire vegetation assessments — species recovery rates, recruitment success, weed response. This data directly predicts food tree availability at different points post-fire — from the initial understorey flush that brings in wombats and wallabies to the canopy closure that enables brushtail possum recolonisation.
Request: Assessment polygon, survey date, dominant recovering species, recovery stage classification.
Traditional Owner Cultural Burning Program
DEECA · First Peoples' Assembly · Registered Aboriginal Parties
Cultural burning programs — managed low-intensity burns with millennia of ecological knowledge embedded in their timing and placement — produce different vegetation outcomes to hazard reduction burns. Areas recently culturally burned may be exceptional habitat and food resource sites 12–24 months later. Subject to Traditional Owner consent for inclusion.
Request: Subject to Traditional Owner consent and data sovereignty decisions. Requesting guidance from relevant RAPs on what, if anything, is appropriate to share and in what form.
Victorian Biodiversity Atlas (VBA) — Aggregate Fauna Records
DEECA · Arthur Rylah Institute
Cross-referencing VBA fauna records with Habi-Food rescue density would show whether rescue hotspots reflect true population density or specific hazard concentrations — informing both infrastructure decisions and carer deployment.
Request: Species count by 1km² grid, date range. No individual observer or location data for sensitive species.
Wildlife Victoria Rescue Database — Aggregate Spatial Feed
Wildlife Victoria
Thousands of rescues per year. Aggregate feed — species, suburb, month, count — would reveal patterns invisible to any single carer or agency receiving fragmented reports.
Request: Species, suburb (or 1km² grid), month, count. No individual addresses or caller details.
DEECA Wildlife Permit Holders — aggregate species & region
DEECA Wildlife Licensing
Knowing the regional distribution of permit holders and their authorised species helps identify coverage gaps — where animal rescues are occurring but no licensed carer in the permit database is authorised for that species in that area. This is a structural planning problem invisible without the data.
Request: Aggregate count of active permit holders by LGA and species authorised. No individual names or contact details.
Zoo & Sanctuary Release Records
Healesville Sanctuary · Melbourne Zoo · Taronga · Wildlife sanctuaries
Zoos and sanctuaries release captive-bred animals into some of the same zones used by rehabilitators. Release site over-pressure monitoring requires knowing about all releases into an area — not just those from the carer network.
Request: Species, release date, release location (1km² grid). De-identified and aggregate.
Trust for Nature — Covenanted Properties (opt-in)
Trust for Nature
Thousands of private properties with conservation covenants protecting remnant vegetation. Landholders who have covenanted their property have already demonstrated conservation commitment. Opt-in participation would create a network of vetted, protected release sites previously unknown to carers.
Request: Opt-in only. Property centroid and dominant EVC. No landowner names or full boundaries unless landholder consents.
Crown Land Vegetation Management Plans
DEECA · Crown Land Services
Crown land parcels outside parks and forests have individual vegetation management plans that include chemical use, grazing regimes, revegetation plans, and infrastructure works — all of which affect food and habitat quality. These plans are held by Crown Land Services but not spatially accessible.
Request: Crown land parcel ID + management plan summary: vegetation treatment type, schedule, dominant species present. No tenancy or licence details.
Carbon Farming / Sequestration Project Plantings
Clean Energy Regulator · DEECA · Carbon project proponents
Carbon sequestration plantings under the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) scheme are establishing native vegetation across thousands of hectares of Victorian farmland. These will mature into wildlife habitat and food sources over the same 5–10 year timeframe Habi-Food is planning for. The project boundaries and species compositions are recorded in project proponent reports to the Clean Energy Regulator.
Request: Project boundary polygon, dominant species planted, establishment year. From CER project registry — already partially public.
Pipeline & Utility Corridor Vegetation Management
APA Group · Australian Gas Networks · Water utilities
Gas pipeline and water main corridors cross significant areas of remnant native vegetation. Corridor maintenance — mowing, chemical treatment, access track management — affects adjacent food trees and is scheduled in contractor management plans not visible to carers.
Request: Corridor maintenance schedule, chemical treatment type and date, treatment polygon. From existing contractor compliance reporting.
The problem that isn't talked about
Wildlife rehabilitation in Victoria operates in a permanent state of reactive crisis. Not because carers aren't skilled or dedicated — because there is no system that tells them what's coming. A planned burn. A land clearing job starting Monday. An arborist removing six hollow-bearing trees on Thursday. Each one is a guaranteed surge of animals requiring immediate intensive care. Each one arrives without warning. Each one disrupts everything else: work, family, health, finances. The data to give carers advance notice of every single one of these events already exists, is already collected, and is already sitting in a council or agency database. It just isn't connected to the people whose lives it directly controls.
Arborist Work Orders & Significant Tree Removal Permits
All 79 Victorian LGAs · Private arborist companies · VicRoads · Parks Victoria
This is the most immediately actionable dataset in this entire document. When an arborist removes a hollow-bearing tree, wildlife inside — brushtail possums, ringtail possums, sugar gliders, feathertail gliders, owls, kookaburras — are displaced or trapped instantly. Carers are called after the tree is already on the ground. With 48-hour advance notice from a work order notification, carers can pre-stage a response: get boxes to the site before felling begins, arrange to be present during removal, ensure hollows are checked systematically rather than reactively. Council arborists already require permits for significant tree removal — that permit is generated in a works management system days or weeks before work begins. A spatial notification from that system to Habi-Food is a single API endpoint that would directly save animal lives and reduce emergency call-outs for carers.
Request: Tree removal work order — species, estimated hollow status (if assessed), location, scheduled date. From existing council works management systems. 48-hour advance notification preferred. No private property owner details.
What the notification enables: Pre-purchase possum boxes and joeys pouches. Contact Wildlife Victoria to stage response. Arrange a second carer to attend the site. Tell employer/family in advance. Arrange vet pre-notification for potential crush injuries. None of this is possible without notice. All of it is possible with 48 hours.
Council Vegetation Maintenance Programs — mowing, pruning, slashing
All 79 Victorian LGAs · Parks Victoria · DTP Roadsides
Council parks and roadside maintenance programs — mowing of grassed areas, slashing of roadsides, pruning of street trees — are planned months in advance in council works programs. These activities displace ground-dwelling species (bandicoots, echidnas, wombats), expose nesting birds during breeding season, and remove understory food resources temporarily. The parks maintenance schedule for any given month exists as a spreadsheet in every council's asset management team. It is never shared with wildlife carers. A feed of planned vegetation maintenance activities — location, date, type — would allow carers to time food collection visits before maintenance removes material, and to anticipate displaced-animal rescues in the following days.
Request: Maintenance activity type (mow/prune/slash/remove), location polygon or road segment, scheduled date. From existing council asset management and works scheduling systems.
Land Clearing Notices — private development & agricultural
DEECA · LGAs · Native Vegetation Regulation
Private land clearing — for development, agriculture, or infrastructure — is the single largest source of sudden, large-scale animal displacement in Victoria. A landowner clearing 10 hectares of remnant bush on their property in a single day can generate dozens of rescues simultaneously: possums, wallabies, echidnas, birds, lizards. This is a guaranteed mass-casualty event for the local carer network. The clearing notice or permit to remove native vegetation exists as a record with DEECA weeks before clearing begins. Advance spatial notification of approved clearing — with expected species composition based on EVC data — would allow the local carer network to pre-stage a coordinated response rather than receiving 20 simultaneous Wildlife Victoria callouts with no context, no co-ordination, and no supplies.
Request: Clearing location polygon, approved vegetation type, approved clearing date range. From DEECA native vegetation removal permit system. No landholder names or property details.
What Habi-Food calculates automatically: Based on EVC type of cleared area → expected species displaced → number of carers in the area authorised for those species → whether capacity exists or mutual aid is needed → food and supply requirements → pre-alert to Wildlife Victoria. All of this is a calculation from existing data. The clearing permit is the trigger.
Planned Burns — full forward schedule with species displacement prediction
Forest Fire Management Victoria · CFA · Parks Victoria · Traditional Owner bodies
Currently integrated: upcoming planned burns as a WMS tile layer. What's missing: the structured data feed that allows Habi-Food to calculate the expected animal displacement from a specific burn, notify affected carers in advance, and generate a supply and capacity pre-brief. A 20-hectare burn in dry sclerophyll forest in the Yarra Ranges will displace an estimable number of wombats, wallabies, echidnas, and ringtail possums in a predictable radius over a predictable 2–4 week window post-burn. The burn is planned months in advance. Carers are told nothing.
Request: Burn polygon, planned ignition date, vegetation type, approximate area. From existing FFMVic burn planning systems — the burn plan already contains all of this. We need it in a spatial API format rather than a PDF calendar.
New Planting Programs — revegetation, street trees, parks developments
LGAs · CMAs · Parks Victoria · Melbourne Water · Carbon project proponents
New plantings are the good news side of the operational equation — and equally invisible to carers. A council planting 200 Eucalyptus viminalis along a creek corridor in Ringwood in March means that by 2029 there's a significant food resource that doesn't exist today. If carers know about it at planting, they can record it in Habi-Food as a "future food source" and begin planning releases into that corridor 4–5 years ahead. This is the difference between reactive and managed — but it requires knowing what was planted, where, and when.
Request: Planting location, species, quantity, date. From existing council horticulture and revegetation project records.
5-year impact: Carers begin planning release sites and food corridors around known future canopy. Councils can be shown in real time whether their plantings are being used — both by carers and by the wildlife they release. A native tree in a park is no longer an invisible infrastructure asset. It has a documented ecological function and a documented user community.
Emergency / Reactive Events — floods, extreme weather, infrastructure failure
VicEmergency · SES · Bureau of Meteorology · EPA
Floods displace ground-dwelling species and create acute rescue surges. Extreme heat events — heatwaves above 40°C — kill flying foxes en masse and cause dehydration crises in possums, koalas, and wombats. Hailstorms strip canopy food sources overnight. Infrastructure failures that close roads or restrict movement affect carer response capability. BOM already issues these alerts — VicEmergency already maps active events. Integration into Habi-Food would mean carers receive a single operational notification that combines the weather event, its likely wildlife impact, and the current capacity state of the carer network in the affected area.
Request: VicEmergency and BOM alert polygons integrated via existing public APIs — both already publish machine-readable alert feeds. Requires only a structured interpretation layer to translate weather event type into likely wildlife impact.
Private Arborist Scheduling — voluntary industry notification
Arboriculture Australia · ISA Certified Arborists · Private contractors
Not all tree removals require council permits — particularly on private land under exemptions. A voluntary notification system — where arborists log a planned hollow-bearing tree removal in Habi-Food 48 hours before felling — would extend the advance notice system to private work. Many arborists are already trained to check hollows and want to do the right thing. They simply have no system to notify carers efficiently. A simple web form or app submission from arborists would create a notification that reaches every Habi-Food-registered carer in the area instantly.
Request: Voluntary. Tree species (if known), hollow assessment (yes/no/unknown), address (suburb level only for privacy), planned date. No property owner details.
What operational intelligence returns to carers
Time. Not scouting for food. Not scrambling for supplies at midnight. Not calling around to find backup. Time that currently goes to reactive crisis management would be available for the animals already in care, for relationships, for rest, for the things that make it sustainable to keep doing this.
Predictability. A planned burn on the 15th means a supply run on the 10th. An arborist job on Thursday means a second carer arranged by Tuesday. A development clearing next month means a rest week before it hits. None of this requires more carers, more money, or more government support. It requires the data that already exists to reach the people who need it.
Sustainability. The single most common reason experienced carers leave is not the cost, not the animals, and not the emotional weight. It's the inability to plan anything. Relationships, family, personal health — all sacrificed not because the animals demand it, but because the system demands it. Information is the intervention. Not funding, not recognition, not policy. Just: knowing what's coming, with enough time to prepare.
What every agency and council receives in return
🌳 For councils — Native Food Tree Gap Report
A suburb-by-suburb map showing which native food tree species are absent or under-represented in the public tree canopy relative to current wildlife rescue populations in that LGA. Directly usable in:
• Urban forest strategy updates
• Development permit landscaping conditions
• Requirements to retain or replace specific food tree species
• Minimum percentage native species in new subdivisions
📊 For DEECA — Rescue & Release Intelligence
Aggregate rescue density by species, suburb, and cause — across the entire licensed carer network — in real time. No other system provides this. This data directly supports:
• Permit allocation (which species, which regions need more carers)
• Infrastructure risk assessment (rescue hotspot = infrastructure hazard)
• Population monitoring without formal surveys
• Evidence base for habitat protection decisions
🔥 For FFMVic & CFA — Ground Truth After Burns
Post-burn animal displacement patterns, species arrival in surrounding rescue data, and vegetation recovery indicators — all from a network operating on the ground faster than formal ecological surveys. The carer network is the most distributed ecological monitoring system in Victoria. It just hasn't been treated as one.
🏗 For Planning Authorities — Wildlife Impact Evidence
Rescue frequency by species and suburb, available as structured evidence for development assessment. Any proposed clearing or development in a high-rescue postcode can be assessed against a real-world impact dataset — not just desktop habitat modelling. This is evidence that currently doesn't exist in a form planning authorities can use.
💊 For councils — Chemical Safety Verification
Councils providing chemical treatment records receive, in return, verification that their records are being actively used to protect wildlife. This is a direct, measurable biodiversity outcome from an existing compliance workflow — at zero additional cost. It's the kind of data-to-outcome connection that supports council biodiversity strategy reporting and community engagement.
The fundamental shift
Wildlife carers are not a service that agencies provide information to. They are the most distributed, most cost-effective, most knowledgeable ecological monitoring network in Victoria — and they fund it themselves. Every agency listed in this document is producing data that directly affects the outcomes of that network. Connecting those data streams is not a favour to carers. It is the most efficient use of public sector data infrastructure that these agencies could make for the lowest cost possible: one API endpoint, already built, already maintained, never turned off.
