Building a trusted foundation for biodiversity research
The Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) manages more than 6.8 million hectares of land across Australia, protecting threatened wildlife and habitats through science-informed conservation. Every survey, observation, and monitoring activity contributes valuable information that helps researchers understand how species are changing over time and where conservation efforts can have the greatest impact.
However, over three decades, those records accumulated in a wide variety of formats. Wildlife observations were stored in paper records, Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft Access databases, and other legacy systems, making it difficult to standardize or analyze the information at scale. Bringing together camera-trap images, bird surveys, capture records, bioacoustics, and opportunistic sightings into a single accessible database was a significant undertaking.
AWC needed a way to centralize, clean, and standardize decades of conservation data while ensuring it remained accessible for both internal research and broader scientific collaboration.
Transforming legacy wildlife records with FME
Having used FME in previous roles, Spatial Ecologist Clare Millen recognized it as the ideal solution for the project. Through the FME Grant Program, AWC obtained an FME license and began building its first centralized database of fauna observations.
Using FME, AWC developed workflows that validate incoming records, identify errors, standardize data formats, and transform information into database-ready structures. The workflows also handle many of the most time-consuming aspects of data migration, including inconsistent date and time formats and data originating from numerous legacy sources.
“FME’s ability to deal with different formats has been amazing,” says Millen. “Things like date formats and time formats can take such a long time to clean up in other systems, but FME handles them really well.”
Beyond automation, FME’s visual interface has also made it easier to communicate complex workflows to non-technical colleagues and train additional team members as the database continues to grow.
Expanding access to Australia’s biodiversity data
The centralized database now contains more than 1 million wildlife records, of which 575,000 have been contributed to the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). As Australia’s primary biodiversity database, the ALA provides researchers, conservation organizations, and citizen scientists with access to species observations, historical records, and distribution data from across the country.
This marked AWC’s first contribution to the Atlas, with new observations now being shared on an ongoing basis as additional data is collected. By making these records publicly available, AWC is helping support biodiversity research well beyond its own conservation programs.
Internally, centralizing the data has significantly accelerated research projects. Scientists can now access standardized records without first spending time locating, cleaning, and combining datasets from multiple sources.
“If you don’t centralize data, if you don’t standardize it, there’s a risk that it can be lost,” says Millen. “I love knowing that it’s in a safe place now, and now that it’s on the Atlas of Living Australia as well, it will be there for a really long time.”
Creating a lasting resource for conservation
As AWC continues collecting thousands of new wildlife observations each year, FME remains central to its long-term data strategy. The organization plans to continue contributing new records annually to the Atlas of Living Australia while expanding its centralized database to support future conservation initiatives.
The centralized data is already enabling new research, including projects investigating the impact of feral cats on Australia’s native wildlife. By reducing the time required to prepare and access historical records, researchers can focus more of their effort on understanding threats to biodiversity and developing effective conservation strategies.
What began as a data centralization project has become a long-term foundation for conservation science. By using FME to standardize and integrate decades of wildlife observations, AWC has created a trusted resource that supports research, informs conservation decisions, and helps protect Australia’s unique biodiversity for years to come.
