I’m trying to set up a Traditional Project for Pleasant Creek WMA in West Virginia, and I’ve hit a wall with the place boundary.
I exported the official WMA boundary from the WV DNR Avenza map using Google Earth Web — it shows up perfectly there as a clean polygon (3,030 acres, follows all the roads and lake edges). I saved it as a KML and double-checked: it opens fine in Google Earth, QGIS, and even online KML viewers.
But when I try to import it into iNaturalist (Create Place → Import KML), I get this error:
My vague memory is that when I did this, I had similar trouble, which ended up being solved by converting the KMZ file that Google Earth gave me to a KML file, which is what iNat needs. I’m sorry my memory on it isn’t fresher.
you need to make sure your file contains a polygon-based feature and not just boundary lines.
the WMA is also defined in OSM. so you could get the polygon from OSM via Overpass Turbo, by running the following set of commands and then exporting the results as KML. that process should give you a set of polygons.
you would just copy the exact commands above into the text input box in the overpass turbo page, click the run button, click the export button, and then click the button to download a KML file. i wouldn’t expect that process to be any more difficult than the process you attempted yourself.
