Protecting threatened and otherwise sensitive orchids
WOW Sensitive Species Guidelines
WOW has adopted the Australian Government’s Sensitive Ecological Data – Access and Management Policy v1.0 (2016).
Successful long term management and sharing of sensitive ecological data is about trust, risk management, the credibility of the participating organisations and the desire to disseminate the best available data to inform management of the environment. The most effective approach to managing sensitive data is to have a consistent methodology that is applied by all organisations with the same or similar information.
The policy can be downloaded from the Department of the Environment and Energy website.
Some key points about the policy are:
Open access by default - data should be freely available, with all sensitivities addressed using targeted treatment methods. If identical data is publicly available through other sources, it cannot be considered sensitive.
Be accountable - the decision to restrict access to data needs to be justifiable, consistent and repeatable and abide by relevant legislation, regulations or policy.
Retain the original data - data custodians must retain an unaltered original version of the ecological data and safeguard this original version using best practice information management procedures.
Transparency - documentation should be linked to the data and must be available to all users of the data. Documentation ensures potential data users understand what data exists, why it was classed as sensitive and how it has been altered or protected.
What is WOW doing to protect location details of sensitive orchids?
Throughout the development of WOW, we liaised with ecological data custodians from the state/territory departments to ensure local data requirements and restrictions imposed are met, whilst enabling access to as much non-sensitive data as possible and permitted.
Some key points about how WOW will manage sensitive data:
WOW will follow State/Territory government agency policies and data management standards regarding restricting data availability to the public on the iNaturalist website.
All orchid locations viewed on the iNaturalist website will be obscured by a 0.2 x 0.2 degree latitude rectangular cell (about 20 x 20 km, or 400 km² encompassing the hidden true coordinates). Recognised threatened orchid species (those with an IUCN equivalent conservation status) will receive further protection, with no location details provided publicly.
The relevant government agency will be responsible for releasing additional information (including the detailed locations) following established application processes.
Researchers and authorised data users can apply for full access to the data as supplied (not denatured) following existing data access channels. WOW will list on the website contact details for the relevant State/Territory agencies.
All users will have full access (i.e. not denatured) to their own records they supplied via the app.
Last updated May 2020.
