Fauna spotter catcher shift report app
A spotter catcher walks ahead of the clearing machine, checks hollows and ground debris, and relocates or holds any animal found. The civil contractor needs a shift report the same day, because the approval holder has to show the condition was met for every hectare cleared. The data is event-driven — a sighting, a capture, a release, an injury — and has to stay tied to the clearing area it came from.
Built for construction firms running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Spotter catcher shift report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Spotter catcher shift report
Shift report — Clearing Area 3, Day 6
- Project
- Fictional Highway Upgrade, Section 2
- Shift
- 06:30–15:00, two spotter catchers
- Area cleared today
- 1.8 ha (cumulative 9.4 ha)
| Event | Outcome | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Hollow-bearing tree HT-112 inspected before felling | Brushtail possum present; tree soft-felled after it left | Status: Managed |
| Carpet python under log pile | Captured, released 150 m into retained vegetation | Status: Relocated |
| Eastern grey kangaroo in clearing line | Moved off by stopping works for 10 minutes | Status: Note |
| Skink injured by machinery | Euthanised; reported to project ecologist | Status: Injury |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the spotter catcher shift report where your template puts it.
Shift
- Clearing area (linked)
- Area cleared (ha)
- Spotter catchers on shift
- Weather
- Pre-clearance sweep completed
Per fauna event
- Species
- Event type (sighted, captured, relocated, injured, deceased)
- Habitat feature (linked tree or log pile)
- Release location (map)
- Photo
Incidents
- Injury cause
- Treatment or vet referral
- Who was notified
Standards the report works to
- Animal Care and Protection Act 2001 (Qld)Animal Care and Protection Act 2001
- In Queensland, the duty of care that governs handling, holding and euthanasia during clearing.
- Nature Conservation Act 1992 (Qld)Nature Conservation Act 1992
- The Queensland framework under which protected animals are handled and relocated during clearing works.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the spotter catcher shift report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the fauna spotter catcher log form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your sites, transects and plots
Enter sites, transects and plots once, as a register. Every one of your species observations and survey events then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The spotter catcher shift report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a spotter catcher shift report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The report concludes no threatened species were recorded; the survey event on Transect 3 carries an observation that says otherwise.
Checks a ecology framework usually carries
- Survey effort described meets the guideline for the species being assessed
- Every species in the results table is carried through to the discussion
- Weather, season and access limitations are recorded, not left implied
- Each approval or offset condition is addressed explicitly
Questions
- Can the contractor get the shift report the same afternoon?
- The shift is captured on the device during the day and the report renders from your template once it syncs, so it can go out before the crew leaves site.
- Can each event link to the habitat tree it came from?
- Yes. Habitat trees can be held as a register that fauna events reference, so the report lists every animal found in each tree.
- Can we total area cleared across the whole job?
- Each shift records the area cleared, and the report can sum shifts linked to the clearing area for a running total.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other ecology work we cover
- Shorebird countsShorebird census report
- Threatened species monitoringSpecies monitoring report
- Turtle nesting patrolsNesting season report
- Bat call monitoringBat activity report
- Biodiversity offset monitoringOffset site report
- Bird utilisation surveysBird survey report
- Camera trap programsCamera trap data report
- Coral reef surveysReef health report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your spotter catcher shift report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.