Overview:

The VFD is a fully-functional, geographically-registered, relational database of distribution and descriptive data on Victorian animals. It contains more than 2.6 millions records of nearly 1400 species, varieties, races, hybrids and undescribed taxa of vertebrates and some invertebrates from about 450,000 survey or collection sites.  Data have been gathered from ecological surveys carried out by DSE, museum specimens, professional zoologists outside of DSE, competent field naturalists, and the zoological literature.

The system operates on Microsoft Windows Vista, XP, 2000, NT and 98 in a standalone or network environment and can be run in read-only, partially editable or fully editable modes.

The relational database consists of six main components each with a number of sub-components:

Species List: A coded taxonomic species list with a range of lookup files.  The species list contains over 20 fields which can be used to characterise each species.  The characters can be used to distinguish such features as conservation status at state, national and international level, general appearance, breeding time, classification and so on .  
Species Descriptions: For each species there is concise description which is as much as possible in plain English with a few technical terms as is practical without trivialising the text.  For all technical terms there is an on-line glossary .
Species Photographs: For nearly all of the species there are digital colour photographs.  For many species there are several photographs depicting male-female differences, juveniles, nesting sites or different colour forms.
Survey or Collection Sites: A series of uniquely identified, geographically located and dated recording or collection sites.  Each site may contain information on the locality reliability, the collector, the altitude etc.
Species in Sites: A list of all species recorded from each site.  This list is linked to the main species list, the descriptive text and the photographs by the unique species code.  The number of each species is often recorded as is the survey and collection technique and the manner used to determine the species.
Maps: A series of geographically-registered maps, of varying resolution from 1:1,000,000 to 1:100,000, upon which distribution data can be superimposed or from which regional searches for species can be executed.

The Atlas of Victorian Wildlife is managed by the Information Services Section (ISS) of the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE). 

The zoological nomenclature is kept up to date by the staff of ISS on advice from the a range of experts inside and outside DSE. The conservation status of each species within Victoria (rare, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct) is determined by ISS staff in consultation with other professional zoologists while the conservation status within Australia follows the list from the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.