Photo credit: California Academy of Sciences
It is now easier than ever for the California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB) to incorporate your iNaturalist records for sensitive plant and wildlife taxa, thanks to the California Biodiversity Data Exchange (CalBioDEx, for short). This is a first-of-its-kind partnership between the CDFW, the California Academy of Sciences, and iNaturalist in order to facilitate data sharing of iNaturalist records for sensitive species with CDFW for species conservation and management decisions.
The CNDDB has long maintained an iNaturalist project to reach out to individuals about their sensitive species observations, which currently has 150,000+ observations of over 2,400 sensitive species. Observations that you opt to share with CDFW through the CNDDB project will continue to be a valuable resource, especially when users fill out the suggested observation fields (number observed, reproductive evidence, etc.).
A more streamlined data flow between iNaturalist and CDFW will make it easier for CNDDB staff to process that data into Element Occurrences (EOs), which are broadly used for environmental review and conservation purposes, as well as to inform state and global conservation status ranks. We expect it will take several years for iNaturalist observation data to be fully integrated into the CNDDB system. Submitting data to iNaturalist will not satisfy project or permit requirements to submit data to CNDDB; direct submissions to CNDDB will continue to be important.
As part of the data exchange, we are also working with our partners at the Academy and iNaturalist to identify data gaps for sensitive species and leverage targeted citizen science campaigns to fill in those gaps. As part of this collaboration, CalBioDEx has developed an outreach campaign focusing on increasing the number of high-quality iNaturalist observations of clovers (Trifolium spp.) and milkvetches (Astragalus spp.). You can start Counting Clover and Mapping Milkvetch (PDF) right now by joining the project and keeping an eye out for these often-overlooked plants. The event runs from March through August, and we’ll be highlighting some of the neat CNDDB-tracked clovers and milkvetches you may encounter in future updates!