Posted by AaronClausen
Hi All,
Earlier this year, I made the difficult decision to provide advanced notice to the Atlas of Life in the Coastal Wilderness (ALCW) and Budawang Coast Nature Map (BCNM) projects, that we would no longer be able to support either project in their current form beyond 30 Jun 2021.
This was fundamentally due to a limitation in NatureMapr’s model - the way we were taking on additional projects and supporting them, was completely unsustainable.
ALCW and BCNM are now well along the path of their transition to iNaturalist. I want to thank both projects for their support over recent years and sincerely wish them all the best for the future.
Going forward, NatureMapr is in an excellent position.
We have completed the one-off redevelopment of the entire platform (170,000+ lines of code). This mammoth undertaking was largely invisible work that took close to 2 years to complete over evenings and weekends, but was vital to ensure the platform could keep up with the growth in usage - both now and well into the future.
The ability to report Surveys (frogs, birds, marine life etc) has also been completed in full, with FrogWatch ACT working closely with NatureMapr to develop and pilot the new capability.
A number of important improvements to the NatureMapr mobile app have been rolled out, with many more under way (more on this soon).
With that work behind us, we are now ideally placed to continue to grow, sustainably, and to continue the development of more exciting user facing features and enhancements.
In 2021, with a revised, more sustainable model, NatureMapr will expand into more regions, establishing direct strategic partnerships with local governments (“Local Government Partners”) and universities (“Research Partners”) across Australia.
Citizen Scientists will be able to pick up the app anywhere in Australia and report a sighting, without first needing to “download or activate a project”. That sighting will then be automatically routed into the appropriate regional project.
Shortly, we’ll be setting up new regions to establish full coverage of NSW including a new South Coast, NSW project. This will be followed by a second wave later in the year, establishing full coverage across Australia.
The team are excited about 2021 and thank you for your continued support.
Cheers
Aaron.