Calling all King County, Washington iNaturalist users! Did you know you may unknowingly be supporting conservation by helping us track and manage invasive plant species in our area simply by posting observations to the platform? This is a real-life example of how an iNaturalist observation unintentionally helped prevent the potential demise of an old growth forest.
Learn more about iNaturalist and how it works here: www.inaturalist.org
Keywords for this blog post:
- [iNaturalist] Observation/Post: recorded interaction with a species (type, location, photo(s), etc.)
- [iNaturalist] Project: intentional collection of observations from the iNaturalist database.
- Collection projects like our King County Noxious Weeds Project are free to make and allow you to select species, location, and more to automatically filter from the millions of public observations into your project.
How one (unintentional) weed report prevents a bigger problem.
Picture this…you see a cool plant you want to identify, you decide to use the new & improved iNaturalist app to figure it out and post it as an observation for your future reference because WHY NOT, it only takes 2 minutes. Fast forward, you get a response from the noxious weeds team because as it turns out this is a rare invasive plant species that a whole government program is dedicated to preventing its likes from entering Washington state and your observation allowed them to address the infestation before it could become a true problem!!!
This story illustrates how easy it is to make a difference, even if its on accident.
Step 1: a cool looking plant strikes your curiosity, time to identify & post to iNaturalist!
Our unintentional reporter (@neilpa on iNaturalist) is a bird watcher and avid iNaturalist user who was birding in Seward Park, a hot spot thanks to its biodiversity and old growth goodness. They see an eye-catching plant growing in the nearby brush that they noted “looked out of place” and snap 3 photos for identification/inventory purposes. They upload their photos as an observation to iNaturalist which offers helpful identification suggestions, it identifies the plant as rush broom (Spartium juneum) (AKA Spanish broom).
So, what’s the big deal? This is now 1 of only 20 infestations of rush broom that we are aware of and closely tracking in all of King County, WA. Rush broom is a Class A Noxious Weed – meaning landowners are legally required to eradicate this species statewide due to its limited distribution (because we can prevent it from becoming a larger issue). This observation was particularly helpful because the plant was growing in an area of Seward Park that we would not have surveyed otherwise. It’s near a historic infestation (1,500 ft2 in 1998) that has been closed since 2021 after none were found there for 5 years.
Step 2: the observation meets project specifications and automatically appears in the KC regulated weeds · iNaturalist Project.
This is how an observation turns into a weed report. All observations of regulated weeds within the bounds of King County automatically appear in this project. As soon as an observation is made that meets these specifications our staff’s iNaturalist aficionado (@tomerler) is notified, confirms the ID/responds to the user, and shares the report with our specialist who manages the weeds in that part of the county (in this case, @maria28).
Step 3: King County Weeds Investigation: ground-truthing time!
These observations auto-populate into our field staff’s database using GIS integration for internal tracking; AKA observations that show up in our iNaturalist regulated weeds project show up as a layer in our internal maps. This means beyond seeing the posts in iNaturalist, our field staff can check in on these reports while they’re already in the field.
It’s at this step our specialist Maria Winkler (our staff who had been tracking the nearby infest for nearly 20 years before closing it) was able to go verify the plant’s presence and notify the owners, in this case Seattle Parks.
Our team uses an ArcGIS based app called “Field Maps” to track & manage noxious weed infestations from their phones. The iNaturalist layer gets auto-updated 2x per week to include any new reports. Each asterisk icon is a data point that represents an iNaturalist observation/report from that calendar year. In the app, staff can select a data point and get information about the observation, including a link to the observation itself. Not shown: once they have checked out the observation in person, they can edit the data point to update the status/icon from unsurveyed to verified.
Step 4: Early Detection; Rapid Response: Seattle Parks to the rescue!
Once the species was confirmed, our specialist reached out to her contacts with Seattle Parks and as it’s a priority species and the time was right, they came out the next day and dug it up. Case closed! This is a stunning example of Early Detection Rapid Response (EDRR) because with the help of a public reporter we were able to address the plant before it could make seeds and spread. Next steps: as the site is now re-opened our protocol is to survey the site annually until nothing is seen for 5 years.
Moral of the story: your reports matter! Accidental or not.
Whether you’re making an intentional noxious weed report or happen to accidentally save the day, iNaturalist is a great way to get your weed reports to the King County Noxious Weed Control Program. This platform is used by quite literally millions of people, and the free data it provides is used by groups like ours around the world. If you’ve been sitting on a library of plant photos, this is your sign that it’s time to do something with them!