What is Trapper?
Trapper was created in 2014 for the GWCT. It uses modern communications technology to simplify the recording of trap locations and trap success.
Trapper maintains an updated inventory of your traps, including snares and mink rafts. You use a simple interface on your mobile phone or other device to record ‘events’, such as setting a trap, checking it, recording captures, and finally removing it. Trapper cross-references all these events to maintain the inventory, also allowing later analysis of trapping success.
Why do we need Trapper?
Trapping is such a down-to-earth, practical activity that many trap users resent the intrusion of record-keeping into it. We sympathise with this point of view. Nevertheless, trap records are valuable in many ways and increasingly important:
- Trap records allow you to review and improve your trapping. Which trap sites have performed best for you? When do they catch best? Did your run of poor success with snares start with snares bought from a different supplier? How has the number of grey squirrels caught changed over the last ten years? There are many variables and endless questions. Memory is too unreliable to answer them. That’s what data-handling tech is for.
- There are many questions that are of shared interest among trap users. One lifetime’s experience is not enough to answer them. In the past, the GWCT has conclusively answered some of these questions through co-ordinated trials in which many trap users were asked to keep records. Such studies lead to firm conclusions that carry a lot of weight with politicians. With paper records, though, it was laborious for everyone. Trapper opens the door for trap users to combine their efforts in field trials to test new traps or to explore the relative merits of different trapping techniques.
- If you are indisposed for some reason, good records will allow someone else to find your traps: Trapper will guide them to within a few metres of each one using GPS. A good record-keeping system can even allow trap operation to be shared safely and responsibly among two or more operators.
- We operate in a largely urban society where the majority instinctively dislike the idea of trapping wild animals. For us, trapping is a necessary management practice, but we must also show that it is as focused and responsible as we can make it. We see this as a proactive public relations task, rather than a defensive one.
- It is sometimes necessary to prove responsible use at a personal level. In Scotland it is a legal requirement that snare users keep records of where their snares are placed and what they catch. Being able to produce records quickly can defuse what could otherwise become a lengthy, intrusive and unpleasant investigation. Trapper provides very robust evidence of responsible use, and it’s a lot easier than paper records.
How it works
Trapper is a web-based app, and will work with any computer, tablet or smartphone that can access the Internet. Once set up, it will also function in the field without the need for either an internet connection (Wi-Fi) or mobile phone signal. Trapper can be operated entirely from a desktop computer, but it is especially intended for field use when checking traps. Field use requires a smartphone with GPS capability. Read more >
Confidentiality
Trapper is, of course, storing the data you put into it. The records are uploaded into secure ‘cloud’ storage, in fact the same Microsoft Cloud platform used by 57% of ‘Fortune 500’ companies. They are accessible only by the trap operator and by GWCT. Data are transferred to and from storage under a secure HTTPS protocol (such as you would expect from a bank or PayPal), which means that the information is transmitted in an encrypted form and therefore cannot be read even if intercepted. Access to the data is also strongly password-protected. (You will, of course, need to be careful not to reveal your own password to others.) Read more >