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Montana Natural Heritage Program urges Missoula audience to use iNaturalist to fill invertebrate data gaps
Summary
At a Missoula lecture, Bryce Maxwell described the Heritage Program’s tools and partnerships, outlined large gaps in invertebrate records, and encouraged residents to submit and help identify observations via iNaturalist to aid conservation and invasive‑species response.
Missoula — Bryce Maxwell, program coordinator for the Montana Natural Heritage Program, told an audience in Missoula that residents can play a key role in strengthening the state’s biodiversity data by submitting photos and observations to iNaturalist and the Heritage Program’s online tools.
"We inform decision processes quickly and we provide as much certainty as possible," Maxwell said, summarizing the program’s mission. He described the Heritage Program as Montana’s central repository for species and habitat information, created by the Montana Legislature in 1983 at the request of The Nature Conservancy to give a common set of data for environmental review, permitting and planning.
Why it matters: Maxwell said the Heritage database contains thousands of records but still shows large taxonomic and spatial gaps for invertebrates. He gave figures from his slides to illustrate the scale: the program manages information on roughly 18,322 taxa or habitats overall, has added millions of observations, and currently imports tens of thousands of iNaturalist records for Montana (the…
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