As I’m a surveyor, a lot of my observations are on private land. For instance, this plant is next to the back corner of a lot I’m surveying, and this ivy, which I could get to only because the fence was broken by a falling tree, is at the back corner of the lots behind it. On the other hand, this mushroom is in the right of way. The neighbor, who came over to see what we were doing, did not realize that the right of way is around three times as wide as the road. (The owner had me, an arborist, and Terminix visiting all at the same time.) The spider was on the lot, just next to the driveway. Should I mark observations to indicate whether they’re on private land and how hard it is for the general public to get to?
Right of way – fair enough.
But if was my garden, unless visible from the road, I would prefer the obs to be obscured.
Altho having looked at those obs, maybe they do not need to be obscured.
I obscure everything on private land out of respect to the property owner.
Doing so may be overkill in the case of organisms that will attract neither poachers nor sightseers. “This yard has a dandelion in it” is admittedly unlikely to lead to trespassing. But rare flowers, nesting birds of prey, and edible mushrooms certainly can. There is a whole sliding scale in-between that I don’t want to take any chances with.
If there were more systems integration, a property owner could store a yes/no on their auditor site data indicating that they don’t allow open observations… and iNat could adhere to the wishes of the property owner. They’d need to work with data aggregators which supply data from all the disparate county systems to apps like “hunting points”. As it is… it’s a dilemma for you.
Basically it would be a huge effort by a million different systems… so probably not going to happen. But it would be cool if it did.
I would probably obscure everything and ask the property owner if they would like them to be open.
Can I ask what may be silly questions?
I can see the first two of these fall somewhere called “Enka” and have been given very precise locations with accuracy of 5 meters (35.55558, -82.663961 and 35.555589, -82.664172, respectively).
First, were these very specific locations generated because the observations likely were uploaded using mobile data through the app using location permissions through the app? (That is not my process, so again, if a silly question, I apologize.)
Is the concern that someone might actually travel to these locations because of the observations? If the accuracy circle is broad enough, and the observation falls within that circle, why the need to consider marking that something is on private land? Or obscure it? I thought that was the reasoning behind threatened species, but are we now concerned persons might seek to visit non-imperiled onservations and we are somehow facilitating this?
Or is this more about property rights of owners, in which case perhaps we ought to seek permission before photographing and uploading on private property?
Is there a good reason to leave the location circle so small that someone could actually see what residential property it is on? For observations in residential areas, I make the size of the location circle large enough to encompass a good portion of the neighborhood, or of the surrounding area, so that no one can pinpoint the exact property it was on.
Residential property owners like me sometimes pay for a survey to understand how far they can go clearing invasives. I need to know where the line is because my neighbor might want to keep honeysuckle as a privacy screen. In this case, I’d be ok with my surveyor posting open observations on my property (i’d still like them to ask). The open observations by a surveyor might be something I could point to if a neighbor complains when I remove a plant that’s close to the line. That’s one reason anyway.
I’m not sure I’d be swayed by a large accuracy circle if they didn’t also ask. I’d be trusting the surveyor’s counter-party with a shared location that the counter-party obscures.
I don’t see an observation being posted at a location as an invitation to show up there. A large percent of observations on iNat are on private property, and I’ve never seen any problem with that. No one would go onto Google Maps, see a tree in a backyard, and say “oh I’m gonna walk into that yard without permission so I can see that tree”. I don’t see how an iNat observation is any different. So what if someone can see on iNat that a particular backyard once had a bee in it?
This is my question too. To interpret the presence of an observation in a yard as an invitation to walk there would be complete madness. Google’s Street View is a collection of over a quarter trillion photos, a large chunk of which show private property. The fact that you can see the property in a picture on the internet shouldn’t make anyone think they’re allowed to trespass there. I understand that there are bad actors out there who will deliberately trespass to photograph an organism, but presumably we’re not talking about those folks, as a “private property” warning wouldn’t dissuade them. Only obscuring (in whatever way you prefer) will keep bad actors away. Are there well-meaning people out there chasing down others’ observations who can’t tell the difference between private and public property without being told in the observation? Maybe? But I don’t think that’s a common enough situation to warrant changing my own behavior. I’ve certainly “chased” observations made by others in my area, but only if they’re clearly in a public space like a park or preserve. Someone could easily locate my private residence from my iNat posts, but adding “PRIVATE” to all my home observations wouldn’t give them any information that isn’t already very apparent. So personally, I don’t comment on the “publicness” of my observations.
But the value of plant survey for neighbor squabble aside, the quote above makes me think this may be the concern (bolding mine).
I am not sure concern is the right word. Line of thought?
I suppose the idea is to mark that it is, in fact, in a garden, not public? Before someone sets out.
(I am unsure how common it is that someone sets out to see specific observations others have made, especially of more common species.)
if it’s a wooded lot and the surveyor is observing an orchid, how much obscuration should the surveyor use (and does the owner of the property have any say)?
laws covering the right to roam vary wildly by country, and from there enforcement can vary too. I feel that it isn’t incumbent on you to explain the laws pre-emtively. it might be smart to ask the land owner if they’d prefer the coordinates obscured for their privacy.
there’s also the fact that some people can get away with breaking social and legal boundaries where others cannot. not long ago I presented female rather than male, and there are a lot of places I feel safe exploring now which previously I’d have avoided.
as for protecting an organism, that’s why we have auto-obscuration for some taxa in vulnerable locations. poaching is, sadly, profitable – if you have such a concern, please flag the txon so that curators can evaluate.
I think rare orchids are perhaps automatically obscured, no?
I am not an attorney, nor in the US, and unfamiliar with the law(s) which might guide that. Here, for example, surveys are done before a property can be listed for sale and must be done by a person on the ayuntamiento approved list, but they would never include photos in the final survey and plants would never add or subtract value so there would be no reason for photos of such to be taken.
I can’t prevent the surveyor from assuming that the property owner agrees with inat’s level of obscuration. but I agree with the moderator above…
Right. This is where I landed, before your comment, neighbor spats in other countries being very different from here, and so conceding surveyor plant photos perhaps hold value in that area.
I think I also agreed, even previous?
edit to add: I think we are all agreeing on the property rights of owners, even if practices vary, place to place.
What I am not clear on is if the concern / train of thought is that someone in the general public might use iNaturalist observations of non-imperiled species to geolocate those specific plants and travel to them for whatever reason.
If you are doing work covered under a signed contract, it may include a privacy clause that governs what you can do with observations taken while working. If you do not know whether what you are doing is covered under a contract, you should ask your superior if it is ok.
ha, you’re at least working locally to me. these spots are very close to my home.
As a rule, I obscure all coordinates on private property unless I’m standing on the street or sidewalk and the organism is visible from those public spaces.
it is actually a large problem that photographs posted online can draw excessive crowds to a spot. public, private, wherever. accurate coordinates make it very easy for this to occur. you can see this as a significant issue going back some time with places that have beautiful views. Spot gets published online, it draws crowds, which bring more geolocated photos, which draws more crowds, etc. there are cases where private landowners have had to deal with some of these crowds. maybe they’re cutting through private property to access a site. maybe they’re parking in someone’s yard. the details vary in each case.
But this can be a much smaller scale problem, too. this can be seen with geocaching. this is a little different in that sharing the coordinates publicly to encourage people to visit is the entire point. But many public land managers regulate geocaching precisely because people searching for the cache will trample vegetation while searching for it.
there was some plane wreckage in the mountains here that created this problem. it was there for decades (on public land). the location was shared online and the crowds descended. vegetation was trampled. visitation continued, and that trampled vegetation became braided social trails through the forest. Those social trails then began to erode, further degrading the area. The parks service eventually got fed up with it and mounted an expensive operation to extract the airplane wreckage with heavy lift helicopters and stuff.
in the context of inat, if an observation in someone’s yard drew a single uninvited guest, that would be too many.
then there are intensely personal reasons for obscuring the locations of your observations. and there are a multitude of those. look at the location security settings available on exercise tracking websites. You can hide public locations of activities that start/finish within a specified radius of a specific place so you can hide that specific place (home, work, anywhere else that’s sensitive). you can find cases where servicemembers being careless of their exercise tracking apps have revealed the locations of top secret military bases. people might keep track of any activity patterns you might have in order to stalk you or to identify when you might leave home or your car for a significant period of time so they can break in and steal your stuff.
Some one around my area often posts observations from sewage ponds that are usually fenced and closed. He generally notes that they are “not open to the public.”
Back when I was younger and often walked off trail, I didn’t pay much attention to whether I was on private or public land because (1) often I didn’t know (not an excuse that will work for you working as a surveyor), (2) finding the potential owner takes lots of time, and (3) people rarely noticed me and more rarely cared (though they usually do like to be asked, if they notice).
Morally, I personally wouldn’t be concerned about posting those photos unless they were likely to bring people to the site, entirely possible for some species but not an issue for most. Things visible from beyond the property line are fair game, as far as I am concerned.
Legally, if your contract has a privacy clause, you’re probably not going to be able to post the photos unless you have permission. (There might be wiggle room there, if you set the location and accuracy circle so that the reported location is away from your survey line but this actual location is in the circle. I don’t know if it’s better to ask your legal advisor about that or to be surprised and apologize if it ever comes up.)
Reminiscing: Decades ago, a friend and I had a contract with a large corporation to search for a rare species in central Nebraska. The people who hired us wanted us to publish the results (mainly because we stated that habitat in part of the area was unsuitable for the rare species, I think.) We responded, “We can’t!” to the shock of those who asked us. We explained. Their legal department had to get involved and review the paper but finally agreed it could be published. So it goes.
This is not what I was asking.
I am aware of the phenomenon of social media users trampling around for photos of picturesque vistas, artifacts from history, etc. I live in a country with pyramids, pink waters, and cenotes, so I have seen terrible behaviors, though I am not sure it qualifies as a “large” problem, as poor behavior is more of an outlier, thankfully.
But what I am asking is if we are actually anticipating that quite benign, dare I say mundane, observations of taxa of no real significance, should be obscured or marked private because we are now anticipating this could happen.
Are we now thinking to change iNaturalist norms?
I note you already do obscure coordinates (do you mark them private? some other means?) of observations on private property. Does this include private commercial property or just residences?
Note that no military secrets are being revealed, nor was any threat of stalking being discussed, but thank you for the reminder re: the balance between location accuracy and data safety. (Those concerned may wish to run off all location permissions, I assume is your suggestion?)
I work on private land quite a bit and in general do not obscure my observations from those sites. I do if I am specifically asked to or if it is a rare or interesting enough species I think someone may actually come looking for. In general, these observations are already behind barbed wire fences and no trespassing signs, so someone would have to be consciously trespassing to access them. Although you’d be surprised! One of the sites is a ranch that contains the lowest elevation point in Colorado, and twice in four days that we were there, random people showed up to our camp looking for that spot. They had to cross multiple fences and gates to get to that spot and seemed oblivious that they were trespassing. When I lived in California, I also had a birder show up at my place of work to look for a Williamson’s Sapsucker I had posted on eBird but put in the location name and the comments that it was “private property” and that did not stop them. So, go with your gut and obscure what you think should be obscured. And always follow what you’re legally obligated to do (i.e., in some cases I am not even allowed to upload photos at all, full stop).
I don’t see any reason to obscure observations on private property just because they are on private property. An observation is just a record that “this organism was at this place at this date and time” – it is not saying “feel free to come to this location to try to find this organism” and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to interpret it that way. If someone trespasses onto private property because they wanted to see an organism from an iNat observation, that’s on them, not the observer.
I think it’s fair to indicate that an observation is on private property or inaccessible to the public if it’s something you think people are going to want to chase, just as a courtesy and for the sake of informing people, but people are also capable of looking at a map and seeing where the marker is before they travel out to a location. I don’t think it’s required, nor do I think it should be encouraged to mark all observations on private land as “obscured” as a blanket default.
There are certainly other reasons to obscure observations that could be more likely on private property – for example, observations inside your own home, observations that include personally identifiable information, legal requirements, or people in the background who may not want their location logged on iNaturalist – but those reasons apply regardless of whether or not the observation was on private property.