NatureWatch NZ: Join the natural history revolution

Abstract

On a sunny day in September, my son Max and I went for a walk in a reserve in Christ-church. We found lots of neat grey beetles swarming over the yellow flowers of Scotch broom and nearby lemonwood. We watched them for a while and took some photos. That evening, I loaded our photos onto a new website, NatureWatch NZ (http://naturewatch.org.nz), and clicked “ID Please”.

Less than a day later, someone we’d never met, a Finnish-trained entomologist work-ing in Wellington, had signed on and identified the beetles for us. A week later, some-one else had confirmed his ID. NZ got an archived record of this species. Max and I learned what those beetles were and why they liked Scotch broom flowers so much (they were waiting for the seed pods since their larvae eat the developing seeds). You can do this too, with any species anywhere in NZ. It’s important and it’s fun.

Our natural world is changing more quickly and in stranger ways than ever before. To detect, understand, and manage these changes, we need the combined vision of lots of eyes. Throughout most of NZ’s history, very little of what people observed was rec-orded and what was remains widely scattered in notebooks and library shelves. We’ve seen a lot individually but collectively we remain blind to most changes in nature, and that’s dangerous.

Furthermore, most Kiwi’s engagement with nature is limited to an appreciation of clean water, dramatic topography, and wild shades of green. My surveys of Lincoln Universi-ty’s first-year domestic students found that while 99% knew that kiwi were native to NZ, only two thirds knew that bellbirds were native and a quarter knew that grey warbler were native. Over a third thought that brown trout were native. This lack of connection to our natural history doesn’t bode well for society’s stewardship of nature.

NatureWatch NZ wants to turn all this around. It is a free website with free apps for iPhone, iPad, and (soon) Android. It’s built by the NZ Bio-Recording Network Trust (NZBRN) and powered by the open-source iNaturalist.org platform. NZBRN is an inde-pendent charitable trust dedicated to bio-recording since 2005, largely funded by grants from the NZ Government and operated by a board of NZ scientists.

NatureWatch NZ aims to make it easy and fun for everyone to find out about nature and share what they find. You can record any species, be it native or introduced, wild or cultivated, microbial or massive, marine to alpine. If you don’t know what it is, upload photos and find out. If you think someone else has made a wrong identification, you can suggest the right one, and if you need more information, you can make a com-ment. You can also draw new places on the map and join projects on your favourite places and species. If you don’t find the project you need, you can start one and invite other users to join. You become part of a vibrant online community of nature watchers.

NatureWatch NZ is about open data. Anyone can download pubic observations or put a widget with a live feed of observations on any other website. NatureWatch NZ is connected to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) so researchers and other biodiversity websites can easily find and use NatureWatch NZ’s public observa-tions.

While the public data on NatureWatch NZ is shared, you only need to share as much as you want. You retain ownership of your observations and photos and can choose a variety of copyright options. You can also obscure or make private any of your observa-tions. Obscured observations are fuzzed within a 10 km radius, something that is also applied automatically to all critically threatened species and lizards vulnerable to poaching. You need a valid email to sign up but everyone comments on your observa-tions via the NatureWatch NZ website and your email is not visible on the website.

Modern technology is making it increasing easy to combine the observations of lots of regular people. It’s a revolution in how we learn about the natural world. Other NZ pro-jects are part of the revolution. The Ornithological Society of NZ runs a NZ portal of eBird (http://ebird.org/nz), which is a great tool for dedicated birders. Like NatureWatch NZ, eBird share its data with GBIF. You can log plant observations with the NZ Plant Conservation Network (http://nzpcn.org.nz), which is a useful web resource for plant information (at the time of writing they do not share via GBIF).

We can all make a big difference by getting stuck in and sharing what we see and where and when we see it. If you see anything really unusual, it is important to log the observation promptly in case it’s a new biosecurity incursion (if you think it is, also call the Biosecurity NZ hotline, 0800 80 99 66). Just picking one favourite species you can reliably identify and noting when and where you see it, and don’t see it, is immensely valuable for figuring out how well that species is faring. It’s time for NZ to open its eyes to its natural history and NatureWatch NZ is here to help.

Side bar: A Mark in every town One person can make a big difference. Mark Crompton, a retired weather man from Hokitika airport, has logged an incredible 41,692 observations (and counting) in Na-tureWatch NZ and its predecessor NZBRN, mostly from his travels about the West Coast. A flock of 100 white-fronted terns is counted as one observation, making Mark’s contributions alone larger than most NZ institutional biodiversity databases. Mark has logged so many observations that you can search on his observations of harriers, for example, and see the highways of the West Coast written in harrier observations. This will be an important long term legacy for understanding changes in West Coast nature. Imagine how much more we’d know about NZ nature if we had a Mark in every suburb and town throughout NZ.