I’d love to get some perspectives from this community on a project I’m working on, my intention is truly not to promote it, but to get genuine feedback on whether peers find the approach meaningful.
I’m developing Wild Forager, an Android learning tool that uses biodiversity occurrence data from iNaturalist and NABU | naturgucker (via GBIF) to help people explore edible wild plants. The idea is to visualize historical observations alongside plant profiles, morphological traits, seasonality, and lookalike safety notes while encouraging users to learn to identify plants themselves rather than rely on automated recognition.
I’m also evaluating whether integrating the iNaturalist identification API could work as a secondary confirmation layer, but this will be only after users have first attempted identification on their own.
At the moment the app is only available in Germany and is currently in an early testing phase on the Android Play Store. You can find it there by searching for “Wild Forager”.
Since much of the underlying data comes from this community, I wanted to ask: does this kind of learning-focused approach resonate with you? Any thoughts on the concept or the use of the data would be genuinely appreciated.
If this is released in the United States, please direct users to only forage nonnative plants. Yes, (with ever fewer exceptions) it really has gotten that bad here.
putting aside your own legal liability for creating a foraging app, what you’re suggesting / doing seems like a very parasitic use of the iNaturalist platform. people are already wary of posting things to iNaturalist for fear that collectors will find them. your app wouldn’t help that problem by letting loose more collectors on observation locations.
i assume you have a commercial revenue model for your application, and that, too seems problematic from a terms of service perspective.
and if you’re trying to figure out whether folks are receptive to AI and LLM stuff, i can tell you that there are many people who hate it with a passion.
Thanks for sharing tour concerns. but I have to say that a few of the assumptions in your comment don’t really match how the app actually is intended.
The app does use open biodiversity data that is already publicly available through GBIF. It doesn’t scrape or reveal anything that isn’t already accessible through those platforms. If you tested it, you’d probably also notice that a lot of the content focuses on warnings, ecological responsibility, and the legal framework around foraging in Germany.
For example, the app explicitly mentions regulations such as the Handstraußregel and includes safety notes about biodiversity impacts, protected species, and responsible harvesting. I also encourage people to start with very common plants that are often considered “weeds” or otherwise unwanted species, rather than rare or sensitive plants.
Completely understand that some depending on the context, might be more cautious about linking biodiversity data and foraging. At the same time, I think it’s more constructive to look at how a tool actually works before assuming intentions or impacts. That kind of feedback is much easier to work with.
Oh wow, I didn’t know the situation had gotten that serious in parts of the US, could you elaborate a bit on that? just out of curiosity. since the app is only being developed and tested in Germany. The regulations here are quite clear, and for now is just a fun experiment so I don’t expect really to expand it elsewhere at least not anytime soon.
There is a ton of irresponsible foraging in the US. A lot of commercial-focused operations have destroyed populations of ginseng, ramps, and other species. There are also people who don’t understand or refuse to understand the concept of leaving enough of a species for it to regrow the next year.
can you guarantee that how you intend people to use an app is going to be how people actually use an app? iNaturalist itself is not intended to be an app for collecting, but there are people who use it in that way. the point is that your entire audience is collectors, and by pointing them to locations of things they want to collect, you’re going to make the problem worse, whether you intend to or not.
the problem is when you bring a lot of people into a place that they don’t intimately know, they don’t know that that patch of X has already been foraged. if you start with 100 X and one person takes 10 X and then another person takes 9 X, and then the next person takes 8 X, you will still end up with 0 X at the end of the day.
It seems to me that the effort might be better spent collaborating with existing platforms in Germany that are designed specifically around foraging – e.g. mundraub.org comes to mind.
I like the idea in a sense…I think its good for people to have more awareness of edible plants around them.
But I would be horrified to think that someone is using my iNat data to figure out if something is edible… it’s just not reliable enough I think for this sort of context. Ditto with the autosuggest.
I hope you have really comprehensive detail in the app around how to discern dangerous/confusion species and a UI which forces people to grapple with these details.
I imagine this is a huge minefield if you release in different countries also, given in some countries confusion species exist which do not in others.
Having spent time with people who forage - I also don’t have faith in most people who are new to foraging being able to correctly ID plants even with comprehensive instruction. Most people I’ve met don’t have broader awareness of flora / fungi and fail to delineate one thing from another - like with new naturalists ( or anyone new to a broader taxon ) - just with significantly more risk.
I feel like the issue of “if everyone takes one, there won’t be any” is resolved by instead using the framework of “don’t take the first and don’t take the last”. Instead of telling people “you can take this”, you tell them what things to pay attention to to make the judgement of if the population can handle it and their responsibilities as a forager. It sounds like the op is making sure to include that sort of thing in the app and at the end of the day, you can’t make anyone follow the rules if they are dead set on not doing it. This seems a good way to reach people who want to do it right with answers that are not just “don’t” or “do” but encourage learning about and working with the land.
Not just species identification, but also the legal contexts about whether foraging is allowed, where, and under what conditions are going to vary enormously from country to country, as are questions of liability of the app maker if people use it to forage and get sick as a result.
I think a foraging app like this is fantastic! That being said I don’t use much apps + I mostly just document where I find edible plants myself, with a photo, google maps or just a mental note.
For people who use Apps, I think this is great if It can help more people learn foraging & eventually appreciate our natural world & the amazing plants that grow in it. Maybe this could become something like an INaturalist but for foragers?
But yours has a better lay out with more info, however I would also take notes from the foraging app “Gather” made by Feral Foraging. https://gatherapp.co/
That being said, more good foraging apps are great! I hope your app gets better and better + competition is ultimately good for both apps as long as neither goes through enshitification (A sad phenomon with most apps & technology these days becoming more shitty).
I am curious how will you make money with your app? adds or will it be a paid app or have a tier system where paying customers get the best experience?
As for more feedback, can you provide more pictures of how the app works?
iNaturalist automatically obscures the location of certain species based on conservation statuses. Is the threat posed by foragers taken into account for taxon geoprivacy?
What are the names for ramps and ginseng that are being over foraged? It might be interesting to compare the number of obscured vs not-obscured observations.
I don’t recall the name for ginseng, but it’s been a known problem for some time. There are two kinds of ramps - allium tricoccum and allium burdickii (the second one is a more newly described species).
There are way more observations with taxon_geoprivacy obscured than geoprivacy obscured. For those who are concerned about foraging destroying local plant populations, you can check if taxon geoprivacy is set to obscured in your area.
