Citizen scientists can help save Australia's threatened species if given more direction

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https://phys.org/news/2024-08-citizen-scientists-australia-threatened-species.html

A mention of iNat and some suggestions for how citizen scientists can improve data quality in order to make it more useful for species risk assessments, like those carried out by IUCN’s Red List team.

The article is specific to Australia, but the suggestions for improvement are not.

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Thanks for posting that link. I agree that data from citizen scientists can be valuable, especially if the citizens are given more direction than commonly happens, which is one of the points the link makes.

Sometimes on this forum, somebody will ask: “What should I be observing so my data are useful?” And we all generally reply, “Make observations of anything you’re interested in!” Which is a perfectly good and true answer. Going into more depth with an answer would be hard, I think, but it might be interesting to attempt such answers.

So, I’m going to make a few suggestions here and I really hope others will chime in with their suggestions.

  • First, I’ll say that targeted data collection often tends to be a bit tedious, or exhausting, or take WAY longer than one might expect. Not always, mind you, but often. This is one good reason to recruit citizen scientists, because it spreads out the burden.
  • You’d be surprised what we (the professional biologist community) simply don’t know, especially about organisms other than vertebrates and most vascular plants. If you know something about treehoppers or slime molds or hornworts or pondweeds and the like, please do post any observations of such organisms you can. Particularly with ranges of species likely to move because of climate change, this “randomly collected” information can be useful over the decades.
  • Many countries, states, and provinces where iNaturalists live have lists of rare and uncommon species. While I hesitate to recommend people go learn where rare orchids or turtles live and then disturb such species, there are many rare and uncommon species that are simply under-surveyed. Learn what’s considered rare and uncommon where you live and then, when you find them, report directly to the relevant agencies what you saw (not just post to iNaturalist).
  • If you can, go explore areas that are new to you or appear to have few records in iNaturalist. I’m not talking here about traveling to faraway places; I’m talking about driving 30 minutes or an hour from home to some unappreciated state park or conservation area and walking a trail no one seems to have walked for iNaturalist purposes. I firmly believe that holders of conservation areas should know as much as possible about the lands they conserve, including the common species, the invasive species, and that obscure little gall on the hickory leaves.
  • Find out about citizen science projects, such as atlases, in your area and participate. If you don’t know who to ask to find such projects, start asking iNat observers who post a lot from your area. (But I don’t know of any atlas projects in Massachusetts, where I live, right now, by the way.)
  • Do have fun. If the rest of your life is such that you can barely squeeze in a two-hour hike in the nearest park once a month, whatever you post to iNat from there is valuable, if only in that you are educating yourself to see the complexity of the natural world around you.

I hope others have even more useful information to add.

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Do I understand you correctly to be saying that vertebrates and vascular plants are well-known, but anything other than these are not well known? (Sorry, don’t mean to be thick, but I am not clear on this.)

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NB: iNatter and forum mod extraordinaire @thebeachcomber is senior author on the linked paper

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Yes, that is what I am saying, but apparently I wrote it in a convoluted way - sorry about that. And even vertebrates and vascular plants are not as well-known as they should be; they are just better known than most invertebrates, non-vascular plants, fungi, protists, etc.

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I started doing citizen science by doing volunteer field work for a university near me before I joined iNat. iNat has a low barrier to entry, but I definitely feel my greatest impact is by doing the direct field work. That said, being on iNat has made me more observant and helped me hone my plant id skills (in that I’ll actually try to key out plants I post sometimes as opposed to just going, “Huh, weird plant,” and walking away), which has improved my ability in the field, I think. I do hope others are broadening their horizons beyond iNat, too, though!

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Currently leopard toad migrating and breeding season and ‘everything observed in Cape Town’ is leopard toad!
Volunteers are recording each individual.

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Thanks very much for clarifying!

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