Habitat tree assessment and register app
Before clearing or harvesting, each habitat tree has to be found, tagged and described: species, diameter, hollows by size and position, signs of use, and whether it is retained or removed. The register goes to the forester, the clearing contractor and the spotter catcher, and it has to stay right as the plan changes. A register that lives in a spreadsheet tends to drift away from the tags on the trees.
Built for foresters running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Habitat tree register
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Habitat tree register
Habitat tree register — Coupe 14 (extract)
- Area
- Fictional State Forest, Coupe 14
- Assessed
- 2–4 June 2026
- Trees tagged
- 37
| Tree | Species / DBH / hollows | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| HT-01 | Grey box, 112 cm, 3 hollows (one >15 cm entrance) | Decision: Retain |
| HT-02 | Red ironbark, 74 cm, 1 small hollow, scratch marks | Decision: Retain |
| HT-03 | Dead stag, 96 cm, multiple hollows, leaning over track | Decision: Remove — staged |
| HT-04 | Yellow box, 58 cm, no hollows visible | Decision: Not habitat |
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 habitat tree register where your template puts it.
Per tree
- Tree tag number
- Map location
- Species
- Diameter at breast height
- Live or dead
- Photo
Hollows
- Number of hollows
- Entrance size class
- Height on tree
- Signs of use (scratches, fur, scats)
Decision
- Retain, remove or staged removal
- Exclusion zone radius
- Pre-felling inspection required
Standards the report works to
- BAM 2020Biodiversity Assessment Method (NSW)
- Hollow-bearing trees are a function attribute in NSW plot assessments, so register data can feed the same zone scores.
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 habitat tree register gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the habitat tree assessment 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 habitat tree register 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 habitat tree register 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 spotter catcher’s records link back to our tree tags?
- Yes. Trees are held as a register, so later fauna events reference the stored tree rather than a typed tag number.
- Can we update a retain or remove decision after the plan changes?
- The decision is a field on the tree’s row, so changing it updates every report that draws on the register.
- Can each tree’s location go on a map in the report?
- Each tree carries a map location captured in the field, which travels with the record into the report data.
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
- 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
- Fauna spotter catcher logsSpotter catcher shift report
- Fauna surveysFauna assessment report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your habitat tree register 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.