Hello intrepid iNaturalistas!

Thank you for joining the Rare Species of Oregon project! This project collects observations of rare or potentially rare species that are of interest to the Oregon Biodiversity Information Center (ORBIC). Our office maintains detailed information on Oregon's rare species distributions, statuses, habitats, management, and much more. Your observations will help us assess where these species are and how they are doing. Many local, state, and federal agencies rely on this information for planning and management, and our data also feeds into an international database maintained by NatureServe for regional assessments and analyses.

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions about what we do or if you have any rare species information you'd like to call my attention to. Observations are manually added to this project so I know I have only scratched the surface of relevant observations - you can search for your own observations to add using the "Add from your observations" link on the project home page, or you can add others' observations as you browse iNaturalist by clicking "Add to project" on the observation page.

You can also comment on our species list (recommend something to be added, dropped as too common, add distribution info, etc). We go through a thorough review and publication of this list every 2-3 years. We just published a new edition of our Rare Species of Oregon publication but we can make changes to our database at any time, so your comments are always useful.

Thanks again and happy observing!

Lindsey Wise
Oregon Biodiversity Information Center
Biodiversity Data Manager