The CNDDB staff would like to welcome our newest CNDDB iNaturalist project members and give a special thank you to everyone who has shared their coordinates with us. We are working hard to track and protect California’s rare, threatened, and endangered species, and the data we have collected from citizen science iNaturalist users, like you, are aiding in that mission.

Your iNaturalist observations help to inform Element Occurrences in the CNDDB database, and we are hoping that your high-quality observations will play a part in our RADMAP project (Range and Distributional Mapping and Analysis Project) to create new range maps and species distribution models using GIS software. You may have recently received a message from one of our two Data Acquisition Specialists Jessica and Kat, who are collecting data on 25 priority species for this project. This month we have collaborated with iNaturalist citizen scientists for high quality observations of:

• California Least Tern
• Blunt-nosed Leopard Lizard
• Ridgway’s Rail
• Inyo California Towhee
• Black Toad
• Wolverine
• Pacific Marten
• Foothill Yellow-legged Frog (distinct population segments)
• Southern Mountain Yellow-legged Frog
• Sierra Nevada Yellow-legged Frog

The support from the iNaturalist community has been remarkable! Of these special status species, we have 2,801 new observations from 824 iNaturalist citizen scientists, like you. If you have questions about the data collection of these priority species for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, feel free to reach out to Jessica (@wild4earth) and Kat (@kcolimaa) on iNaturalist. We are grateful for all of your contributions, and we look forward to future collaborative efforts with the community.

In the past few years, the California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB) has experienced some unfortunate staffing reductions. However, we are bouncing back and in the past few months we’ve been able to welcome back to our biologist team some former employees, and bring onboard some new faces. Don’t be surprised if one of our team members reach out to you about your cool observation of a special status species:

Rachel F. (@rafreund), Zoology, started working with CNDDB in 2012 and is now back better than ever.
Rachel P. (@repowell), Botany, started working with CNDDB in 2013 and has rejoined us in our endeavors. More flower power!
Tammy D. (@tamarackpine), Zoology, started working with CNDDB in 2015; great to have back on the team.
Shelby T. (@shelbynicole), Zoology, started working with CNDDB in 2020 and keeps us moving in a positive direction.
Angela P. (@shorebird365), Zoology, started working with CNDDB in Feb 2023 and is stooping on data like a peregrine hunting Calidris.
Amandeep K. (@amandeepk), Zoology, is one of our newest team members starting in September 2023.
Jessica Y. (@wild4earth), Data Acquisition for both Botany & Zoology, is also a new and a welcome addition to our team, starting in September 2023.
Kathleen "Kat" C. (@kcolimaa), Data Acquisition for Zoology, is also a new and a welcome addition to our team, starting in January 2024.

The permanent CNDDB biologists and iNaturalist project curators are:
Ryan E. (@ryan_elliott), formerly Botany & now Zoology, since 2004.
Brian A. (@cnddb_brian), Zoology, since 2008.
Katie F. (@kgferg), Botany, since 2009.
Annie C. (@anniexchang), Zoology, since 2009.
Kate K. (@kkeiser), Spotted Owl Database, since 2013.
Jennifer P. (@jpoore), Botany, since 2022.

More about the California Natural Diversity Database https://wildlife.ca.gov/Data/CNDDB
What species do we track?
Special Animals List https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=109406&inline
Special Plants List https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=109383&inline
https://wildlife.ca.gov/Data/CNDDB/Plants-and-Animals

This is primarily from a comment relating to what kinds of animal observations the California Natural Diversity Database is keenly interested in (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67207184). Because of their high mobility, birds and pelagic species present some issues in mapping areas of conservation interest.

"...it is difficult to map pelagic species. The CNDDB is primarily interested in what is called an Element Occurrence under the NatureServe Natural Heritage Methodology, something started by The Nature Conservancy around 1979. An Element Occurrence should represent a regularly occurring, reproducing population. Additionally, since the Department is interested in "managing" these species at specific sites, the ocean can present an issue (though there are Marine Reserves specifically for these reasons). The short is, that we primarily focus on terrestrial species or areas where pelagic species regularly hual-out or nest on terra firma, like Steller sea lion breeding rookeries or Ashy strom-petrel nest sites. These are "manageable" sites that help protect a significant ecological life history trait (i.e. reproduction). So, whereas we track particular species, in some cases we are primarily interested in observations relating to evidence of reproduction, especially for birds (highly mobile, like pelagic fish). Probably one of the most common pelagic species on iNat is [California] Brown Pelican, but I have yet to see a posted observation of nesting BRPE (granted, I haven't searched, but I see a bazillion posts of BRPEs). It's kind of hard to "manage" for a fly-over bird, similarly it might be hard to manage a school of anchovies."

For more info, please see our plant and animal information page, https://wildlife.ca.gov/Data/CNDDB/Plants-and-Animals, and our data submission page, https://wildlife.ca.gov/Data/CNDDB/Submitting-Data.

The California Natural Diversity Database has been working on updating all of our records of legless lizards (Anniella) from Antioch to the Tijuana River Valley. Now would be a great time to upload your past observations to iNaturalist or make some new ones and make sure to share them with us by joining our CNDDB iNat project.

Just in case you need some inspiration!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13538256
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10160429

We recently (in Oct 2018) made some changes to this project in hopes of getting accurate location information we can use for the CNDDB. Now anyone can add observations to this project, provided they are observations made within California of one of the species we track.

Since our database tracks special-status species, nearly all the organisms we are interested in have their coordinates obscured from other users. We are requesting iNat users join the CNDDB project and agree to share their precise coordinates with our database.