The iNat site was mentioned in a local newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago so I was intrigued and checked it out. This journey continues to be exciting for me. I’m about to make a month!
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I was introduced to iNaturalist by my brother…
no clue as to how he found out about it though.
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I don’t think I remember at all. Someone must have mentioned it to me but I don’t remember when or why. I’ve always taken photos of critters so it is a perfect place for me to hang out and is the only “social” media I even have.
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I was an NPS ranger (now retired) and was looking for a way to get the wildlife observation datasets for Yosemite & Sequoia Kings NP ( 10,000 & 65,0000 records as of then, some going back to before 1900) available to the public, as well as my personal records.
Came across Ken-ichi Ueda in 2008 who was working to build this site. He wrote NPS where he ran into the immovable object of institutional resistance to change, alas (that said, the biologist at the time was supportive and sympathetic but not enough to dedicate resources to the project). Worse, I messed up and was unable to upload my personal observations of ~1,000 records for Sequoia Kings then moved on to other bright shiny objects.
The California sightings of a Wolverine this week got me thinking of wildlife observations again and the need to get locations & info out to the public. The original CDFW said there’d been only 2 observations in ~100 years. Not true! There are 50 in the Sequoia dbf and 30 in Yosemite since the 20s or so.
Anyway, I’m going to write iNaturalist and try again this week or so. Technically, government data should be available to the public and, except for security type information, there are no real restrictions I’m aware of… Some of the data would need to be geo-obscured for species who don’t move around much (e.g. Mt. Lyell Salamander) but mostly these are incredibly valuable resources and should be available to the public.
I’m open to ideas and input!
George
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Do you still live in Trinidad and Tobago?
I was researching citizen science projects. I joined a few but didn’t stick with any but iNat. Fun!
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I was invited to import my african bat photos from Flickr.
Became more than some bat photos over the years…
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this link should go to the NYT story behind the paywall:
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2008? Another 5 years and iNat will move into the second human generation.
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