Citizen Science Contributions to Conservation

Researchers have a limited amount of funding and personnel to spread across the global challenge of monitoring species populations. To support their work and our future, we encourage anyone from the public to present any number of images to Wild Me platforms. Your photos help create larger and more accurate pools of data on animal species across the globe, and that support directly leads to more effective conservation action to save endangered species. By contributing your photos and data, you can hugely benefit the entire conservation community by ensuring we have the best-equipped researchers and policymakers to establish suitable management strategies, shape public conservation policies, and publish effective research to support conservation work in years to come.

Submitting Contributions

Before submitting photos and the Sighting time and location, photos must be optimized according to Wild Me guidelines. Read our Photography Guidelines to ensure your photos are suitable for submission.

Submitting Photos

  1. Navigate to the Codex homepage and click the REPORT SIGHTINGS button in the center of the page.
  2. To upload photos, drag your image files into the box, or click the browse files link to select images from your computer.
    • To add more photos, click the + Add more button on the right above the images.
    • To delete a photo, click the small x cross in the top right corner of the photo.
  3. Once your uploads are complete, click the CONTINUE button under the images.

Submitting Information

  1. On the Report a Sighting page, select the number of animals present in the Sighting. Note: A Sighting represents the overall observation of one or more animals that were photographed.
    • If a single animal was photographed in the Sighting, select One animal.
    • If more than one animal was photographed in the Sighting and they appear to be separately identifiable, select Multiple animals.
  2. Scroll down and enter information about the Sighting in the required (*) fields:
  3. Click the Time precision field then select an option for how precisely the time of the Sighting is known.
  4. Click the Select date field and then click the calendar icon on the right to select the date and then select the time of the Sighting.
  5. Click the Species Detection Model field then select an option to either enable the computer software to detect the animal and species and generate annotations, or to create annotations manually.
  6. Click the Region field and then select the area where the Sighting took place.
  7. Click and enter any information in any of the following optional fields as you scroll down the page.
  8. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the box to confirm you agree to the terms and conditions.
  9. Click the REPORT SIGHTING button at the bottom of the page.

A confirmation page and message that your sighting has been reported successfully will appear. Your sighting is now part of our platform’s public data. A researcher will review the animals in your photos to see if they match any on the database.

Click the REPORT ANOTHER SIGHTING button to submit more data, or click the RETURN HOME button to return to the homepage.

Keeping Track of Submission Successes

You can keep track of your submissions and how they add valuable matching results that contribute to species population counts with your own account. We value your time and efforts contributing to conservation research and can provide you with a record of this.

To request an account and track your impact:

  1. From the home page, click the Login button in the top right corner.
  2. Click the Request an invitation link.
  3. On the Request an invitation page, complete the Email address and Your name fields with the details you wish to associate with the account. Optionally, type a note in the Message for administrators field explaining why you want an account.
  4. Click the SEND REQUEST button.
  5. You will receive an email with your temporary login information. Follow the instructions in the email to finish the registration process for your account.