Starting from 2014, the Italian Mammal Society (ATIt) ha started or sponsored various Citizen Science projects with the aim to collect and document any sightings of mammals in Italy.
This data includes direct observations (roadkill, camera trap photos or videos, sightings etc) and indirect observations (footprints, signs of presence, faeces, dens etc), accompanied by geographical coordinates and the date of the sighting. Most of this data is checked and confirmed by a team of expert ATIt members before being inserted in the final database.
Projects:
In 2014, ATIt stipulated a contract to subscribe to the Ornitho.it platform, created by Gaëtan Delaloye (Biolovision srl) with a section dedicated to mammals.
To contribute: www.ornitho.it
CSMON-LIFE
Citizen Science Monitoring is the first Italian citizen science project regarding biodiversità, confirmed by the European Commission in the LIFE+ project, created by the Università di Trieste together with various organisations, facilities and partners.
In this project, the ATIt has supported the creation of the “Mammal” campaign, with the objective of collecting sightings of 16 species of easily-identifiable mammals (coypu, fox, hedgehog, weasel, porcupine, badger, polecat, italian hare, european hare, red squirrel, grey squirrel, dormouse, roe deer, red deer, wild boar).
Any sightings can be sent to www.csmon-life.eu/pagina/app/45 and there is also an app available for this campaign.
Therio.it
Therio.it is a platform dedicated to Italian mammals. It was founded thanks to a collaboration between ATIt, that guarantees the precision of information shared and its correct use, and the Dipartimento Bioscienze e Territorio dell’Università del Molise, that hosts the server and created the platform. The database is structured with Darwin Core, created for the GBIF platform and gives the possibility not only to insert sightings (citizen science) but also georeferenced data contained in museum collections, cited in scientific literature or contained in technical reports.
iNaturalist
INaturalist is a platform completely dedicated to citizen science and created by the California Academy of Science that lets anyone upload and download species sightings, create specific projects dedicated to collecting data on groups of species or geographic areas. The project entitled “Mammiferi d’Italia” was started in 2015 by a small group of ATIt members and already has 4000 sightings!
Please visit www.inaturalist.org/projects/mammiferi-d-italia for more info and to leave a sighting.
Our Facebook group, that boasts more than 6,000 members (updated April 2018), is a very active group that often helps us collect data posted by Facebook users looking for ids or willing to share their sightings.
