How to report rubbish and trail degradation in country parks directly to the AFCD – a hiking app for conservation
- TrailWatch lets you plan and track your route as well as photograph and report incidents to the Agricultural, Fisheries and Conservation Department
If you are a regular hiker and see piles of rubbish, an eroded trail, a fallen tree or even an animal carcass, you might think there is little you can do. But there is an app that allows you to report the incident and the Agricultural, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) will fix it.
TrailWatch is for planning and tracking your route, but it also has a ‘report incident’ function. You can take a picture, tag it with a predetermined label such as litter, and add a description. The app developers have a direct line to the AFCD and will alert them.
“If it’s in the country parks they are very responsive. If it’s something like a waste dump, it gets cleared in a day or two. A felled tree might take a few more days. It depends on what is reported,” said Alicia Lui, project director at TrailWatch.
“The AFCD are very good. They are very responsible, most of them are very very passionate about nature. We have a good relationship and they have a good relationship with most environmental NGOs.”
There has been an uptake in reported incidents as more people are hiking, unable to travel away from Hong Kong for a holiday. But compared to the 5.2 million kilometres of hiking logged on TrailWatch since its inception in 2014, the reports are minimal.
“The function isn’t used as much as we’d like, as people don’t know they can report it,” Lui said. “They don’t know what is reportable or they don’t know what will happen to it. For example, if you see a step half broken, many people wouldn’t think to report it. But you can and we’ll alert the AFCD to fix it.”