There are some concerns with sharing tree data following the spike in illegal harvests because of high lumber value (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/13/tree-poaching-hits-canada-amid-lumber-shortage ), and I am now wondering how the geoprivacy feature affects observations in Traditional Projects. I see you can choose to ‘trust’ collection and umbrella projects, but I didn’t see that option for traditional projects. Does joining a traditional project automatically trust the project?
If I download observations from a traditional project I am part of, does it obscure those locations? Is it the same whether I am an administrator or just a member?
Trusting a traditional project works the same way as trusting a collection project and the level of trust is selected when you join the project. The admins, managers, and curators of a traditional project can download true coordinates of observations where the observation creator has trusted the project. They cannot see coordinates where the creator has not trusted the project. Project members cannot see the true coordinates.
Canada has a unique situation where the true coordinates of observations made through the Canada portal that are automatically obscured at the taxon level can be viewed by the staff of the Conservation Data Centers, due to an agreement between iNaturalist and the Canadian CDCs. It doesn’t apply to observations that are obscured at the individual observation level.