and to my shock, almost half of the places are “Spearfishing Zones”, which I find appalling from nature conservation perspective, a topic which I’d like to think is part of iNaturalist’s mission and a purpose for many of us here.
I don’t know if they were created so someone knows to avoid them or to monitor areas where ecosystems are being destroyed for “sport and fun”, but they don’t give me a great feeling.
I was hoping to find via that place search nature reserves and places to visit, places which might have iNat projects associated with them, not hunting grounds..
I looked at Tenerife Spearfishing Zone T7. It looks like an amazing place to observe wildlife. Many great observations and over 100 observers have used the area. I saw no observations of fish being speared. I did learn from google that Tenerife controls sport fishing fairly rigorously and set up the zones to regulate spear fishing as a sport.
What areas need monitoring more than areas where resources are being extracted? It is totally appropriate to have things like hunt zones marked and monitored.
If you go the bottom of any place page, you’ll see who created it (if their account is still around, and if it’s not a standard place). You can message that account and ask them directly (and civilly, please). I suspect anything anyone here says would be speculation.
Outside of standard places, not really. But flag it if you think it breaks the community guidelines. That’s mostly for situations where it’s clear hate speech, or an insult, or something.
I’m not sure how the term is being used there, but I would not assume that the entire “zones” are “hunting grounds.”
My state is divided into three different “hunting zones” for purposes of government regulation. For example you might see on a calendar “turkey hunting season ends zones 1 and 2” and then a week later "turkey hunting season ends zone 3." Each zone has separate seasons and hunting quotas, but this does not mean all land in the entire zone is open to hunting. There are nature preserves and private land where hunting is completely forbidden scattered throughout all three “hunting zones.” It’s impossible to be in Michigan without being in one of the zones, but that doesn’t mean it’s all hunting land!
If each zone has different seasons and regulations, someone may be interested in studying what effect this has on the ecosystem over time.
Maybe the government will even use iNat data to inform policy.
I wouldn’t think of them as places you need to avoid.