Welcome to the inaugural Community of Practice for Organizational Stewards.
You are here because you and an organization you are affiliated with want to make a difference in Alberta’s protected areas.

I am Hans Potter, and my dad is the president of the Stewards of Alberta’s Protected Areas.

For 25+ years, SAPAA has supported Stewards in Alberta and has taken on functions formerly fulfilled by the province.

On the screen is SAPAA’s Vision star. At the center are the protected areas. Cardinal points, starting at North, include ensuring proper usage, supporting stewards including organizations such as those on the call, monitoring and reporting the state of the areas, and educating Stewards, politicians, and others of the importance of these areas.

This is a Community of Practice. Concern and passion and expertise exist in spades. To build up this community, please introduce yourself in the Chat box what is one or more things your organization does really well or what are your pain points? (Editors note: 21 individuals from 13 organizations registered for the event with 15 people in attendance).

Some context for tonight’s session. This information management model is tailored for nonprofits by being ‘Just Enough’. (Editors note: see the original post here: Just Enough Information Management – for Nonprofits)

Miles’ presentation starts with how BLESS can effectively collect information, where to store it, and how to use it. Let’s hear from BLESS.

Contact Miles at: bless@sapaastewards.com or the board at: board@bless-env.ca.

For those not familiar with the Big Lake Environmental Society, it is almost 35 years old.
One of its achievements was the establishment of the Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park.

Miles has been involved with BLESS for many years. Although he comes from a technical background, his focus for the past decade is visual art (editors note: be sure to check out his work at Miles Constable Artist, it is excellent).

Why did we adopt the QR Code technology for the Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park? (editors note: see QR code – Wikipedia for exactly what is a QR Code).

We wanted to improve our stewardship by improving the information transfer to Alberta Parks. Improve our ability to monitor the park and generate interest in BLESS. In the surrounding 4 communities (Editors note: Edmonton, St. Albert, Sturgeon & Parkland counties).

The technology also engages occasional volunteers who are not interested in a leadership level commitment.

We all recognize that volunteer time is limited and precious. There just are not that many of us.

Any technology had to be friendly to that occasional steward. It had to be very commonplace, and available on their own mobile devices. We looked at RFID Chips initially but quickly realized they require a lot of technical ability to program and money to buy. Thus, we defaulted to QR. Codes.

To use QR Codes we needed a reporting system that was simple enough for an occasional steward to use. It also had to be relatively inexpensive, and flexible because we weren’t entirely sure what we were going to do with it, or how successful it would be.

We selected a company called Formsight. This is not a promotion for them as there are other companies that do the same thing. Their initial plan is $330 a year for which you get 500 MB of space, 5 forms, and instantaneous notification when a form is completed. More money buys you more features and more storage space.

What we looked at was basically a trade-off between being cheap and doing it yourself. We took at Google Forms. This technology has its own limitations, for example it does not play nice if you don’t have a GMail account. This becomes a problem when trying to upload things like images. We decided that the trade-off of money for time was well worthwhile.

On the left side, you’ll see the BLESS report form.

It is simple to create, taking me about 2 to 3 hours; and that was most of that was learning the program. The user puts in a date the time, location of the park, and a text field for what they want to report. And of course, their name and email, address.

Last year we tried a business card with the QR code on it but didn’t get a lot of uptake. This year we posted large signs around the park with the QR Code on them. As a result, the information transfer part is straightforward.

Someone then fills in a report.

In this case, they thought the shelter and the toilets needed some attention. We get that response instantaneously. We then decide if it is worthwhile sending to Alberta Parks. In this case, because it had to do with maintenance, we sent it on to the local parks manager who responded back in a day or two. This shields them from extraneous information.

I mocked up a SAPAA site inspection form. Using the system’s AI suggestions, this is what it came up with in about 30 seconds. In another 3-minutes, added some other fields such as file upload. In other words, building the form is simple and straightforward.

This is the kind of information you get when you log into the database. Every row you see here is a report that you can edit and forward for action. You can also sort the submissions or download them a spreadsheet.

The process is easy to implement, taking me a total of about 4 hours in total to implement. There is almost no maintenance involved. We had to update a phone number on the online form. That took all of 2-minutes. We are getting better information from the public and the system is affordable.

David moved from Ontario in the late nineties and is a botanical chemist by trade. Because of the move, he has spent his time in Alberta learning to be an amateur botanist.

David is lucky as there’s such a great community in Alberta, and wonderful to learn from. He has been BLESS’ed (pun intended).

• Rated 1: three individuals
• Rated 2: two individuals
• Rated 3: three individuals
• Rated 4: none
• Rated 5: none (well except for David, of course!)

What is iNaturalist?

It is a web and mobile application that is a repository for natural observations.  

An Observer could be an expert in their field, a citizen scientist, or want to use the AI tool to identify a species. They can also learn about different species if they’re not familiar with.

As David was joining from a visit in in New Brunswick, he used iNaturalist to identify unfamiliar species when he and his wife were hiking that afternoon.

Opening up iNaturalist and filtering for the Edmonton metropolitan area, this is what pops up.

This orange smattering right in the center are the various observations for the city. And you can see that. There are about 135,000 observations going back to about 2,008 when iNaturalist was set up.

The application is absolutely free, and its citizen science based. With an account, you submit observations or communicate with others from around the world.

If someone is visiting Edmonton and is interested in tiger beetles, they will note there are 98 observations, 7 species, and 25 identifiers.

This is the iNaturalist model. At the center is the observation which is the app’s focal point. It is what you saw and where it was.

If three other people agree with you then it is considered a verified observation.

Some people use iNaturalist as social media and as a repository for their personal observations. It is where they can accumulate, identify, and collect their observations. When they go back to an area, they can remember what they saw and with whom.

David has traveled in many different places other than Alberta and uses the iNaturalist community to contact someone that has seen a specific plant that David is interested in.

Observations can be grouped in a number of different ways including geographically. This is called a boundary and the example is for Lois Hole. Boundaries and observations can also be collected into iNaturalist-Projects. No matter how it is organized, all of the little dots on the map in different colors represent either an animal or a plant.

This one little fuchsia little marker is a coral fungus observation made by someone in June of 2023. This observation is also research grade meaning at least 3 people have confirmed the observation.

Leaving the general functions of iNaturalist, let’s talk about SAPAA’s primary project which is also an umbrella project.

And under this project we can have a different sub projects. What’s really nice about iNaturalist is that you can incorporate other people’s projects into your own underneath your umbrella project. So, for instance, if someone. Has a project about birds in the national parks, then you can link that project under yours.

SAPAA will create boundaries, as required, for each of the 248 WAERNAHR sites. There may be projects rolling up closely located sites. Ultimately everything rules up to our umbrella project. We can then add additional projects as required.

The benefit of using iNaturalist is that there’s so much good information and data out there. And it allows us to understand what sort of observations have been made in different areas. We also hope to encourage people to visit these protected areas see what’s what is there and report back via iNaturalist and a Site Inspection Report.

The iNaturalist information as well as the site inspection reports are rolled into our annual report to the responsible Minister. The iNaturalist information will help to fill a gap we have relating to the biophysical inventory. (Editors note: 2025 Report and 2024 Report).

How will this information be used and how much control does SAPAA have over the project are two concerns raised. SAPAA has accepted to terms of use policies of iNaturalist which can be summarized as be kind and respectful. Otherwise, we have complete control over the project.

Once again, this is the SAPAA umbrella project. It is made up of Boundaries but also projects all rolled up into this dashboard. When this screen capture was taken, we had almost 17,000 observations. The dashboard gives you the ability to filter and analyze the data. For example, all invasive plants observed in the WAERNAHR sites.

Scrolling down the dashboard, there are other features. For example, the map on the left is from the umbrella project and the one on the left are for a particular type of Natural Areas with an Order in Council level of protection.

SAPAA hoping to have its project built by mid 2025 and offer training shortly thereafter. Stay tuned for updates!