<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/australia-invasive-species-bioalerts-inaturalist/>
"In 2023, a Queenslander noticed an interesting clam in the river waters of
Ipswich, a town outside of Brisbane. She took a picture and uploaded it to the
citizen scientist platform iNaturalist.
The images were of freshwater gold clams, a highly invasive species that was,
up to that point, found everywhere except Australia and Antarctica.
That one image triggered Australia’s new biosecurity alert service, which
enabled environmental officers to immediately remove the clams and set up a
monitoring program to check their spread.
Australia is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis, and while the country has
strict biosecurity controls, invasive plants, animals and diseases are getting
into the country, either intentionally or inadvertently.
To help identify, track and manage invasive species, the
Atlas for Living
Australia (ALA) — the country’s biodiversity database — now directly connects
citizen science data shared on iNaturalist with the country’s biosecurity
agencies.
The ALA contains over 151 million records, including 2,300 introduced species
and almost 10 million weeds and pests. The initial ALA records came from museum
data, but now, says ALA biosecurity analyst Andrew Turley, about 50 percent of
the data comes from citizen science — most of that via iNaturalist. The ALA
runs Australia’s iNaturalist node. (Australia is one of 20 countries with its
own node, a local version of the app run in partnership with a local
institution.)
More than nine million Australians now use iNaturalist — about a third of the
country’s total population — and they upload 10,000 new sightings every single
day. There are over 11 million observations on the Australian iNaturalist node.
In fact, Australians are among the top iNaturalist users in the world, with the
third-most observations and second-most for species.
The biosecurity alerting system was piloted in 2020. In 2023 alone, 1,442
iNaturalist records triggered biosecurity alerts; overall, 99 percent of alerts
are thanks to citizen scientists. Another example of a citizen scientist
finding an invasive species was when an iNaturalist user uploaded images of the
Asian shore crab in Victoria during the system’s first six months.
“That was the first public report of Asian shore crab in Victoria, and the
biosecurity department in Victoria didn’t know that it was present there
either,” says Turley.
These initial proofs that the systems worked led to more support, he says, and
the ALA was able to develop the system further."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
