App records big increase in Bindea biodiversity records

Bearded dragons, different flowering wattles and herbs, lots of parrots, and five species of butterfly were among the species recorded following a citizen science workshop held on Bindea two weeks ago.

Late last month, 30 people participated in an iNaturalist workshop on Bindea (Porcupine Reserve), hosted by the Gunnedah Urban Landcare Group. iNaturalist is a free app, website and online community for documenting and identifying species. Before the workshop, there were 233 observations of 127 species from Bindea on iNaturalist. Now, two weeks later, this has made a big jump to 1119 observations of 274 species. This greatly increases the knowledge of what species are living on Bindea.

Of the species photographed with iNaturalist since the workshop, 116 had not previously been documented on iNaturalist anywhere in the Gunnedah shire. Remarkably, 106 of the species are new records anywhere for Bindea, according to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). GBIF is the database of all the world’s biodiversity, and includes the observations from the Atlas of Living Australia, iNaturalist, and eBird. These include a native ladybird beetle, two species of dragonfly, a large grey wolf spider and many native plants, as well as an American aphid and several weed species. This all underscores how much biodiversity is out there to record, and how much can be found by a group of curious people with smart phones.

Many locals will have seen the prolific parrot life around Gunnedah in recent weeks, and six parrot species have been recorded so far in the Bindea project. Due to the recent plentiful rainfall, there were many native plants and weed species currently in flower on Bindea. Pest mammals seen included a fox and several brown hares. No koalas were found, despite extensive looking, including spotlighting at night. This reflects the recent decline of this species in the Gunnedah shire.

People don’t need to be able to identify species to use iNaturalist. iNaturalist looks at photos and combines initial machine-learning “AI” suggestions with follow-up checks by a large community of people with biodiversity expertise. People just need to take photos of the interesting things they find. As the Bindea event demonstrates, this crowd-sourced approach to biodiversity discovery uncovers a lot of new things.

There are undoubtedly many more species still to be found on Bindea. Join in on iNaturalist and keep up-to-date with the project at: inaturalist.ala.org.au/projects/bindea-porcupine-reserve-and-surrounds-plants-animals-and-fungi