I’m glad you mention this; I will be careful to obscure if/when necessary.
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Obscuration on iNat is a 0.2 degree by 0.2 degree square or an area of around 400 km2 (which is a large chunk of environment). I really don’t think it’s going to be possible to find a specific location based on that info except in a few specific cases (coastlines where only a little piece of land is in the box, etc.).
Maybe you’re thinking of locations where someone manually changes the location accuracy and doesn’t center the location on the observation?
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I think a fair number of them do get what they’re doing and just don’t care. It’s essentially the same mindset as was displayed by the guy who came across the last documented whooping crane nest on the prairies and collected the eggs. There is a wonderful place on a Lake Ontario island to observe several species of owls in winter that has been closed to the public because of people (especially photographers) baiting the birds. Some people are just all about themselves and don’t give a damn about the harm they do. Some people are in it for the money and will scoop endangered herps for sale to collectors. Whatever the reason it only takes a small number of them to ruin things for everybody
Part of being an ethical naturalist is knowing when to keep things to yourself. Obscuring is an option. So is not posting the observation.
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If users think a particular species should be automatically obscured, please start a discussion by flagging the taxon and explaining why. There seem to be a few cases here where it would be warranted.
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It may seem like a big chunk of habitat but I went on inat to figure out if I could find a certain spot for a specific type of snake just to prove it could be done. Just from the obscured pins I was able to find the spot where the snakes came from by looking at the area that obscured pins surrounded, and narrowed down the type of habitat to the only spot in the area that could have these snakes. So yes I was able to find out where the place was from obscured pins.
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Please flag these taxa to start a discussion about auto-obscuring them, curators can change the settings if asked there.
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you really shouldn’t rely entirely on iNaturalist’s geoprivacy functionality (obscuring coordinates or even making coordinates private) to hide sensitive locations. if you really want to prevent others from discovering the true coordinates of something, the simplest strategy is to consider not posting the observation at all (or removing it, if you realize after posting that it’s particularly sensitive).
i won’t say that iNaturalist is entirely blameless for potential habitat destruction – and certainly staff could do certain basic things like writing up some basic best practices for observing, including when to consider not to post observations – but i can state confidently that the bulk of the blame for something like habitat destruction is more related to ignorance, carelessness, and bad intent, etc. on the part of whoever is out there destroying habitat. to the extent that iNaturalist can help to reduce ignorance and carelessness, that will actually help to protect species. but if there are really bad actors out there using information to serve their bad intentions, then it seems like eliminating easy access to that information is one of the few options to counteract those kinds of bad actors.
that said, i’d like to think that on balance, iNaturalist is probably helping to protect nature more than it is facilitating harm to nature.
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I am less familiar with such subtleties on iNat, so I guess I’m surprised that worked.
I wonder… Instead of, or in addition to, obscuring; would setting a very large accuracy circle on an observation of a sensitive organism help to obscure it such that your technique would not work?
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i’m not sure we should go down the path of detailing all the ways and situations in which iNaturalist’s geoprivacy functionality won’t fully protect locations. i doubt that most people would really understand all of such a discussion anyway. so unfortunately, there’s not a good way to address your question satisfactorily without into getting into all that mess.
if you really don’t want anyone to be able to discover the true location of your observation, the simple thing is to just don’t post it.
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Just from the obscured pins I was able to find the spot where the snakes came from by looking at the area that obscured pins surrounded, and narrowed down the type of habitat to the only spot in the area that could have these snakes. So yes I was able to find out where the place was from obscured pins.
If there was only one spot of appropriate habitat in a 100,000 acre area, I don’t imagine you would need iNaturalist to know where to look. Regardless, I do think it would be nice if the size of the obscuration area was configurable.
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My $.02: Secrecy breeds ignorance and ignorance breeds apathy.
This doesn’t make the jerks of the world any less aggravating, but has some bearing on how react to the jerks. :-)
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Objection! Flagging a taxon or two doesn’t help any of the other organisms who occupy that bit of fragile habitat that inatters tromp around on.
Consider the soil, for example. Desert soils are very, very, very fragile. One footprint impacts the entire food chain.
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If I understood correctly, people are going to these spots and damaging habitat specifically to find certain reptiles. So obscuring should help other species too. If we want to protect all desert soils from anyone walking there, then that’s more a matter of protected areas rules (such as not going off trails) being enforced than something iNat can do.
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I can add a bit of a different take on the subject of needing to record rare species and their locations. When I first got into nature and the outdoors, I was caught in-between preservationists, and most natural resource managers in our region (the SE) which were true conservationists (wise-use). The environmentalists were trying to pick species which were largely undocumented, trying to have them declared endangered, and shutting down all management on public and private lands.
That was one of the reasons I went to work for the Nature Conservancy of Texas- they were good at that time at trying to find ways to put the sides together and work out solutions. While I didn’t agree with all their positions, one I did was trying to help people document the occurrences on their lands of rare species, showing there are actually more than first realized (such as red-cockaded woodpeckers), and allowing true management which actually benefits the species rather than preservation which causes ecosystem degradation and a gradual loss of habitat.
I see iNaturalist as a similar great tool for documenting the occurrence of many cool species that have been poorly documented in the past. Sometimes those reasons were fear of the government taking away the use of their land, other times just no one has ever tried extensively to look.
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Wise-use is not conservation; it is at best greenwashing, and usually blatant anti-conservation.
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The original use of wise use (as proposed by Gifford Pinchot in the 19th Century ) was a management oriented philosophy premised on what would now be called sustainable use. Its premises are at odds with the land ethic ideas of Aldo Leopold but it is a legitimate stream of American conservationism.
The modern so-called Wise Use Movement is a resource-extraction industry front with political aims. It deliberately recruited (and promoted) regional and local groups to create the impression that it is a grassroots entity. It exists for no purpose other than opposing the environmental movement. It has nothing to do with the original meaning of the term.
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Hey! Can someone post the photo as well as the text of the post here too? I don’t have Instagram and when I click the link it asks me to login :(
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That’s not the same one, the one that initially started the thread was this.
The above captured comment by @franheartslepidus seems to have been made much more recently, and seems to indicate that nothing was done about the issues discussed in the thread, which doesn’t seem like a good thing given that there are clearly multiple Southwestern reptile photographers worried about these apparent effects. Can’t certain species of reptile be obscured? I don’t think we can really do anything about people triangulating reptile spots with obscured points (and I doubt most people would really want to put in the effort), but at least a simple obscuring should do.
In my opinion, I’d say we have a better case to obscure the Southwestern reptiles with overvisited sites than with the majority of obscured species on here, most of which are obscured simply because they are threatened, whether or not displaying the points would actually increase their risk.
I’d also say that we should have some kind of code of conduct on here that supports being as careful as possible, including not intruding on any habitat that will be hurt by footsteps (i.e. alpine/subalpine grasslands and tundra, biological soil crusts in deserts), disinfecting all boats and footwear, including snorkeling/scuba flippers, not destroying any logs or rocks while herping, etc.
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Ah, yeah, remember this one too, second one just drew my attention more when I did screenshots. Can’t comment on US herp situation, we only have 4 reptile species here that are stable.
We do have a thread about right naturalist behaviour https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/create-a-tutorial-and-or-code-of-conduct-on-ethics-of-exploring-wild-places-for-inaturalist-users/18506
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