I’m going to get long and babble but I want you to understand what I doing. So a friend and I are seriously considering starting a new project on iNaturalist that will encompass all roadkill observations to determine where animals are at most threat and what animals are dying due to the result of vehicles. However, just a picture is not enough for me personally, just a photo of the deceased animal is not enough to understand what’s going on. And I noticed that the project “Owl Pellets of the World” has you fill out a form before you add your observation and that’s what I’m looking for. How can I do that?
1 Like
First up, there are already many roadkill projects on iNat (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/search?utf8=✓&q=roadkill, also https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/adventure-scientists-wildlife-connectivity-study). It’s worth checking if any of these already do what you were thinking about.
If none do, the trick is to make a traditional project (in the fine print near the bottom of https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/new) which allows you to add required and recommended observation fields to the project. Users need to fill out the required fields before their observations are accepted into the project. (This requirement make the traditional projects more powerful but also harder for the casual user to add to because they’re forced to supply your additional details.)
6 Likes
There’re already at least 6 fields about cause of death/roadkill details/traffic details, you can choose some of them.
3 Likes
You could also make an umbrella project which encompasses all of these.
2 Likes
So what I’m seeing is, the closest project on roadkill to my preference are global roadkill projects, and I want to keep my project inside my state. My reasoning for this is because, different states are going to have different roadkill. Such as the global projects have raccoons or gopher snakes are high on the list of observations. I know from where I live, waterfowl and rattlesnakes are at high risk of vehicle collision. So despite my obliviousness to search for roadkill projects before posting, I still think it needs to be created since there is none for my state.
1 Like
That’s clearer now, in initial post you said you wanted to gather information about all roadkills.
3 Likes
Keep in mind though that it’s a simple thing to filter project observations to just show the observations and species from your state. For example, the following displays just the California observations from one of the global roadkill projects:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?captive=any&place_id=14&project_id=242&verifiable=any
And if you click on the species tab, it lists all of the species from most common to least common:
2 Likes
@jon_sullivan Thanks for the info. I went and did it anyhow because it’s my opinion that a global project should be an umbrella project and I think subdivisions such as my state can help focus on the area, get more accurate ids and get a larger audience.
While I’m thinking about it, I did make the project under the traditional form and I’m having troubles adding my friend as a project curator/admin. Do you know how to do that?
1 Like
Never mind, I figured it out.
And as a final word, another reason why I created the project despite global roadkill projects is because I’m searching for more subtle details such as condition of carcass, direction of possible travel, what lane it was killed in… You can’t get that through a photo so by gaining any audience will try to obtain that information while searching for roadkill seems like a good idea.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.