I talked a bit about how I got started in this topic.
After initially joining iNaturalist as a way of turning my interest in nature into a pandemic activity while isolating, I discovered that it encompasses an interesting community of folks in many countries doing all sorts of interesting, useful, fun and cool things. I started documenting species on our home property and in the little conservation area where I walk our dogs, the latter location being an interesting set of habitats associated with an abandoned red pine plantation that have recently been getting chewed up by ATVs, snowmobiles, dirt bikes and bush parties. I like to think it helped make the case for a recent (and depressingly controversial) decision to ban ATVs.
I’ve more or less decided on a few criteria for posting. I post things that help me learn new things, things that document sites that are interesting to me for different reasons or sites that don’t have a lot of activity on iNat, observations of species that are interesting for management, policy, political or scientific reasons, etc. I have made a commitment to not turn every walk or drive into an iNat expedition, particularly when it involves other people, although I almost always have my camera in the car when I leave home.
We talk about iNaturalist a bit at work and have used it sparingly to date to document some things of interest. We are developing criteria for doing more of it in ways that don’t compromise our obligations to clients while increasing awareness of the distribution of fish species (primarily) in Ontario.