Yeah, sorry… that was the point of what I was getting at. Do your observations need to get to RG? If you are certain of the IDs you are applying, then you don’t need the confirmation that comes with attaining RG status. If it meets your needs, then a casual grade observation can be just as useful as an RG one…
There has been discussion before about whether iNat observations represent accurate abundance data, and the concensus I think is that it won’t. Perhaps an area such as where you are undertaking your observations might be, depending on how thorough you are with your survey, but irrespective, you will find that RG status really has no bearing on whether an observation is useful for a study or not.