Many Seychellois people and visitors are naturalists or love nature, hiking on trails and taking photos of the species they encounter. There is also a community of scientists who gather and manage distribution data on plants, animals and ecosystems. This iNaturalist project aims at linking all of us in a way that will contribute to the protection of Seychelles biodiversity.
Rare species: The settings of this “traditional project” allows members to contribute observations of rare species with the option to hide the exact coordinates, so that we can make sure the information is not visible for poachers (e.g. for orchids, etc.). But administrators and curators (from the local scientific community) of this project will have access to the exact coordinates so that they can include these observations in the National Biodiversity Database, and use the information to adjust conservation priorities.
Introduced and invading species: Simply contributing photos of plants in your garden can help us update the list of exotic species introduced in the country, and facilitate early detection of new pests or invasive species. Observing species near roads and trails can also contribute precious information. A custom observation field allows you to describe the ‘population status’, which aims at providing records of exotic species in the process of naturalization (producing seedlings but not spreading) or invasion (actively spreading).
Please try to take good photos, fill in the custom observation fields proposed for this project and check the precision of the coordinates. Collecting data with your phone iNaturalist app is very useful, but good photos generally need a proper camera, and coordinates obtained from the phone are sometimes very approximate. You can improve these data back home, connecting from your computer, adding your camera photos and correcting coordinates with help from Google maps when needed.
This project is proposed by Plant Conservation Action group (PCA), who has initiated the digitization of Seychelles biodiversity since 2011, creating a database for all plant specimens collected in Seychelles and stored in the National Herbarium. The database also included simple observations of rare species from historical literature and from extensive field explorations made during a study of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs: 2013). less ↑