Public databases for identifying and mapping plants and birds have had to rebuild infrastructure to hide specific locations of endangered species from poachers
April Glaser / Slate : Tweets: @slate , @ceshegz , @bwarburg , @cnps , @christinatoms , @chloe_beth13 , @ginahelfrich , @alisonborealis , and @aprilaser Tweets: @slate : There's something just a little too 2019 about the internet finding a way to ruin wildflowers. http://slate.com/... Caitlin Shegda / @ceshegz : “When it comes to enjoying nature in real life, most people's intention in sharing their experiences online is to celebrate it. But these increasingly ubiquitous acts are also opening the door to abuse.” Good read. http://twitter.com/... Bettina Warburg / @bwarburg : The granularity of our knowledge is sometimes surprising. http://twitter.com/... @cnps : Our CNPS Facebook group is famous now. Thanks for your article, April. http://twitter.com/... Christina Toms / @christinatoms : FANTASTIC article on the double-edged sword of citizen science and geospatial data. I'm grateful that platforms like iNat and eBird are taking crucial steps to protect sensitive species. cc @CNPS @alisonkestrel @RebaFay http://twitter.com/... @chloe_beth13 : “the popularization of natural wonders, like California's superbloom, attracting thousands of onlookers and social media influencers who step on the flowers, scratches at a larger question how we can revel in nature without inadvertently ruining it.” http://twitter.com/... Gina Helfrich, Ph.D. / @ginahelfrich : This has been a topic of discussion at #EDSIN2019! Environmental researchers are “fuzzing” their data to prevent this type of abuse. http://twitter.com/... Alison / @alisonborealis : YES! A lot of people are extremely wary of geotagging their sightings for exactly this reason. Entire birdwatching forums rely on etiquette about not posting locations. http://twitter.com/... April Glaser / @aprilaser : I wrote about how birds and plants need online privacy, too, as poachers take to open-data citizen science projects and social media to find rare wildlife http://slate.com/...