Integration with iNaturalist?

Hiya, we’ve had enquiries from people on iNaturalist wondering if there is a way we can harvest their images without them having to upload them to multiple portals. What should I tell them?
thanks
Nerida (SeadragonSearch)

Hi @NeridaWilson,
At present, the way to do this would be to use the iNaturalist exporter (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/export) and transfer into Wildbook using bulk import. We do not have automated sharing between the two platforms.

Thanks,
Tanya

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Hi @tanyastere and @NeridaWilson,

Just wanted to update you both that I’ve explored this in iNaturalist, and the export link included above actually does not give a way to export images, only data about observations in csv format. I’ve read up in the iNat support forums and it seems that bulk photo downloads are a bit of a hot topic, with some people requesting iNat develop a tool for this and others pushing back that this would cause issues with people stealing photos and/or using iNat for photo storage. Anyway, seems there’s not yet an option for bulk download from iNat, and may or may not be such an option in the future.

In the meantime, the only way to get peoples’ photos is to right click and save one at a time. This is working okay for me so far because I’m not harvesting huge amounts of photos, but it seems like some sort of future automated sharing between Wildbook and iNat could be a really neat tool since there aren’t currently easy options for dealing with large volumes of photos. Just wanted to share! :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Chrissy

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Thanks for the heads up @ChrissyTustison. That definitely weighs into my assessment.

I can say that our integration plans really start late next year, so definitely keep us informed of this and any other tools that look like they’d be good fits. As it stands, I’m gonna shift this to a feature request based on your research and I’ll report back here when we make a decision about if we’ll be implementing this in some fashion. :smiley:

Tanya

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