Updating and Extending the ecotourism Package for Teaching and Wildlife Trip Planning

This proposal aims to extend the ecotourism R package developed during GSoC 2025 by updating the tourism data to include most of 2025, creating classroom-ready teaching materials, and designing a deployed Shiny app for wildlife exploration across Australia. The project will strengthen the package as both a teaching resource and a practical exploration tool by integrating wildlife occurrence, tourism, and weather data into a more complete and accessible workflow. The proposed work aligns closely with the 2026 project brief: update the package data, develop teaching materials for data science and statistics units, and design, implement, and deploy a Shiny app that helps users learn about the best locations and times to spot wildlife across Australia. The project also builds naturally on my GSoC 2025 contribution to ecotourism, which gives me direct familiarity with the package structure, data sources, and mentor expectations.