I move my observations off my private property so I don’t have iNat trespassers!
So you intentionally post fake data to iNat, isn’t that against the rules? Obscuring is of course fine, but I think putting in false locations is something that you should not do.
Would a few interested naturalist be such a detriment to your property anyway? I just can’t imagine myself declaring an area “this is mine, nobody can come here” - the whole idea of “owning” a piece of land unconditionally is really weird: the land was there before, nobody has created it.
3 Likes
“Obscuromaniacs” is such a fun word, I am gonna keep it :)
I found one downside of this attitude - there are places, where there is one very active observer, who obscures everything. The end result is that on the map, the area is one homogeneous rectangle - their plentiful obscured observations smooth out any structure created by others - and as far as I know, there isn’t a way to search for observation of “anyone but user X”, right?
I move my observations off my property. All are well within an accuracy radius where they are likely to be found. It’s not like I’m moving them out of the general area or to a different county.
I have the right to keep others off my property as much as you have the right to close and lock your house door to keep me out of your home. Do you own your living place?
I fully understand my ownership, that I am caretaker of the land until I pass it to the next care taker, through selling it.
The obscuring changes the use of the data.
Yes, trespassers are a detriment to the land.
Considering how people trash and destroy the public land available to them, I have no problem keeping them out of my backyard.
I won’t bother explaining that keeping out trespassers is also better for my personal safety.,
2 Likes
I think this is totally fair - as long as the true location is within the accuracy circle, there’s no issue. However, your initial comment
did make it sound as though you were intentionally posting incorrect data to iNat, so I think it was very fair for @opisska to question this.
2 Likes
An assumption was made that I was posting false data and being deceptive. I had to respond to it.
I was also rather responsive to the sounds of trespassing is ok, we’re just iNatting. Which is not a legitimate reason to trespass. I’ve also had morel harvesters thinking it was okay to look for them on my property, " after all, I’m not in your dooryard." I’ve also had farm workers leaving trash and urinating and defecating (bringing toilet paper seems to show intent) here. It is rural, and I am a disabled senior. Coming across unknown person/people in my big yard is frightening.
Posting my exact location to the entire world seems a bit much. It also would be rather unfair to the next care takers.
2 Likes
As a former rural landowner, I sympathize!
1 Like
Yes there is. For example here are all bird observations from La Palma, except yours: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=59240&taxon_id=3¬_user_id=opisska
You’ll have to add “not_user_id” to the URL manually, however.
(In general, https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-1-of-2/63 helps with questions like this.)
5 Likes
I think it’s actually educational to take some observations of something like Laetiporus in a public park, and to go try to find them. I was trying (in a fairly well trafficked spot) to see if I could track how often a given patch fruits.
There are spots that I check back at. But a lot of the time, just looking carefully with intent is more useful to me than my GPS pins. Even something that flushes repeatedly from dead wood is pretty sporadic - I found many more examples of multiple observers seeing the same flush, than of the same spot getting multiple observations years apart.
3 Likes
I obscure everything at or near my house for privacy reasons.
1 Like