Today, I added a photo of a destroyed parakeet nest (to save a tree) to an earlier observation. I found out that governments can use our observations from websites like this to track and manage harmful species. It made me think about whether we should keep sharing photos of these animals. What do you think?
3 Likes
I think this will always be an individual decision for each observer and observation, based on local conditions and the observerâs personal preferences. I donât think iNaturalist would ever implement a blanket policy for situations like this.
26 Likes
Why? If the species is invasive and harmful for the local ecosystem, I would want my government to try and eradicate it.
40 Likes
What you upload comes down to what makes you comfortable personally. It would go against iNaturalistâs mission to restrict what wild organisms can be observed and viewed by users, but it would also be difficult to implement: how would we define âharmful animalsâ, how could animals be added or removed from that category, and how could we moderate those taxa when tens of thousands of observations are uploaded every day and each has to be identified to know whether it falls under that category?
15 Likes
Observations of invasive species are vital in enabling control, and preventing further damage, especially if its early on in a incursion. Its one of the many great ways inaturalist is helping conservation. Whilst some people may question the validity of controlling harmful species, the act of doing so will have net positives for natives/endemics.
32 Likes
That depends on how much I trust my government to pursue data driven decisions and act in the best interest of everything. And as a Texan in 2025, that isâŚum, not so much.
17 Likes
Any time you are concerned about negative effects of the location data you can do one of the following, in order form least to most data limitation:
1: obscure
2: mark the location off and use a wide error radius that includes the real location
3: make the observation private
4: not upload at all
Just donât try to combine 1 and 2, this will have the effect of just doing 1 in the wrong place
In many cases detection of invasive species is a good thing, so I doubt iNat would ever want to have a blanket policy restricting location info for such species. However, in any case where disclosure of locations of a species poses an ecological risk, the taxon can be flagged to request that curators consider obscuring all observations of that taxon either globally or in a specific place (country, state, county, ect).
Iâm curious, is there an issue in TX with mismanagement of invasive species? I havenât heard of this
16 Likes
Just noting that options 1, 3, and 4 will also automatically hide any GPS information in the photo metadata, but option 2 will not. So if using option 2, I suggest using copies of the photos with the EXIF data stripped first. If already uploaded to iNat, one can just download the same photos from the existing observation (since the EXIF data were stripped at upload), re-upload them to the same observation, and delete the old copies.
11 Likes
I think itâs up to the individual, and should absolutely not be an iNat policy.
Furthermore, that information is very useful to a wide range of people. When it comes to invasive or harmful species Iâd far rather have the locations marked out with high accuracy than obscured.
15 Likes
Yes this is important, I hadnât thought of this because I usually take screenshots of my photos app so I donât have EXIF data to start
I think this is abetter way to remove EXIF than downloading and reuploading, since it avoids doing any compression twice
In a perfect world, I think someone should be able to upload any organism they find. In this case, as @critters_pnw pointed out, it would be difficult to implement a policy like this, and there would be much debate around what would be considered âharmfulâ. And it feels like an overreach if iNat starts censoring observations because of this. If you believe that it would be in everyoneâs best interest to perhaps obscure or not upload the observation, thats perfectly okay! At the end of the day it varies case by case.
1 Like
Yeah, my method would be a last resort when one doesnât have any other backup of the images, or a shortcut when one doesnât want to spend the time looking for them.
Why is that bad?
14 Likes
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/19349-Myiopsitta-monachus
If you click the Status tab, there are
1329 places listed where this bird is Introduced.
Earthworms are more than welcome in European compost heaps while they are invasive and considered harmful in Canada.
3 Likes
Ah, right, texasâŚ
1 Like
Isnât this true for some species and not others, I thought Canada had native ones
Is this something new? I had multiple obscured observations for which the EXIF data had not been strippedâŚ
To clarify, all photos uploaded to iNaturalist have their EXIF data stripped, but those metadata are stored by iNaturalist and displayed on each photo page (example). If the observation has geoprivacy or taxon geoprivacy applied, and you havenât been trusted by that observer, then iNaturalist hides the parts of the metadata having to do with GPS coordinates, date and time, etc., but still displays the remaining metadata.
7 Likes