Hide location to protect animals from pet trade?

Hi everyone,
I was in a Maryland DNR webinar the other day where we were warned about posting pictures of snakes online- since illegal collectors can mine our sites to find new localities to pick up snakes and amphibians.
I’m curious how to hide location from my photos on iNaturalist- or at least to give a general range- especially with herps.
Thanks!

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Hi @mmmmbugs, for many species threatened by collection by humans, iNat automatically obscures the location of those species for certain areas or worldwide.

You can check to see if one of your observations is automatically obscured by clicking Details at the bottom right of the map.

If there’s a species that should be auto-obscured but isn’t, head to the taxon page and click Curation, then Flag for Curation on the right side of the page under the graph.

To obscure your own observations regardless, on mobile change the “Location visibility” from open to obscured. On the website change it from Location is open to “Location is obscured”. (If you select private it means other people can’t even see what continent it occurred on.) Other than threatened species, I usually do this near my home or other private property.

More info:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#geoprivacy
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#geoprivacy

11 Likes

Please, please use “obscure.” Don’t use private, which gives identifiers no idea even what continent the observation is from.

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Great- thank you! “Obscure” it is!

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