One key problem with the zoo project was that there was no government/public record database that kept track of animal transactions. But not every database is a government database - keep in mind that associations, non-profit agencies and other organizations keep databases. And although you may not have a public access right to the data, you may be able to use your sources to get data. One caution: VERIFY, VERIFY, VERIFY. We did this with the ZOO database by getting two different copies of the data from different sources and comparing them.
Once we had the data, the work began. We didn't receive a straightforward database with lots of documentation; we had to go into the "canned" software written by the ISIS people and find the databases we needed. And there were hundreds of data tables to sort through.
Again, by using sourcing, Linda was able to get some help understanding the database.
Also, the database simply included the names of entities that received animals. There was no field that designated someone as a dealer or an auction. All of that information came from documents and reporting. Linda had to go through the database and manually create a designation for dealers, auctions, hunting ranches, etc.
Reporting and sending samples of data runs to zoos helped us do a better analysis in the long run. Our first analysis looked at any animal transaction going to particular dealers, auctions or hunting ranches. After talking with some sources, we realized that any animal can have multiple transactions, so we narrowed the database to look at just the last transaction for each animal, which is basically where the animal ended up.
One caution: VERIFY, VERIFY, VERIFY. We did this with the ZOO database by getting two different copies of the data from different sources and comparing them.
The next set of analyses showed that some of the animals included things like "domestic sheep" and "domestic pigs," and even though we really enjoyed "Babe," we filtered out domestic animals. We wanted to concentrate the analysis on exotic animals.
We got another database from U.S. Fish and Wildlife that lists endangered and threatened species. We matched these data against the taxonomy of the animal transactions to find endangered animals.
CAUTION: Matching data from two different sources can be extremely tricky and will still require some grunt work to double-check the matches by hand.
Once we had come up with our analyses by zoos, by recipients of animals and by species, we did the most important step to any analysis. We each went back to the very beginning and recreated every analysis. You can't take a chance that you missed something the first time. You must be able to duplicate your work.
Jennifer LaFleur can be reached by e-mail at jlafleur@sjmercury.com