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I recently discovered that the New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service produced this cool online map. You can hunt for particular species of plants or animals, and you view a map of your chosen area with markers showing where various sightings of the things you are looking for are located. It even shows the exact GPS co-ordinates and the date spotted.

I just did a search for Duboisia myoperoides in the Blue Mountains National Park, and there were six sightings. I thought it was a coastal species but it seems to extend inland further than I thought.

I reckon it's pretty interesting idea to go and check out plants in the wild - perhaps as a control to see if it matches up to plants we already have in our collection, or just because we would love to see it growing naturally. But, I am a bit concerned that some people might abuse this cool tool. Please do not go out there and cause damage. Just because corporations behave like that, doesn't mean we have to follow in their footsteps. Our ecosystems are fragile and under enough threat as it is without us taking great care of what we have left.

I think it might be nice to act a bit pro-actively with this stuff too, perhaps there is information we have on species that could be fed back to the Parks to help them come up with management plans for protecting endangered species.

NSW Wildlife Atlas

EDIT typos

Edited by whitewind
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I thought this might produce a bit more interest! I think it's an amazing tool.

For example, hunting for interesting species like Duboisia hopwoodii - where can I get that info?

I am a bit obsessed by this thing at the moment, I've just been looking for Pituri in NSW and I was a bit surprised at how many hits I got. I thought I would share a bit more info on how this works just in case there are people who it might be useful for.

This is the main search engine link. Atlas

There's four categories to answer

1. Which species or group?

Click on Search for a species or group of species

A box appears, click on the box and type "Duboisia"

Hit Go! and when the new box appears click on Duboisia hopwoodii (pituri)

2. Legal status?

Click on "All Records" (This helps search for endangered / protected species)

3. What area?

We can pick the whole of NSW but I decided to select a region so:

Select a geographic area - then use the drop down list to pick a zone e.g. NPWS reserve - then hit Go!

This then open up a dialogue box of all the National parks and reserves. Click Mungo NP

4. Period of records?

Tick all records

Now tick the disclaimer and click on Submit Search.

At the bottom of the search results page, remember to tick the box next to the name of the plant you searched for - in this case Duboisia hopwoodii, then go back up the screen and hit "View Map".

Finally! A new page appears and the map slowly downloads with the points marked where this plant has been seen.

If you want to see that data behind this (like the date spotted and the GPS location) click on Identify tab at the top of the screen and a dialogue box on the left shows you all the info.

It sounds a bit clunky (it is a bit) but after a few goes you can hunt much more quickly. Also you can download the records as a txt file so you can enter the GPS in to Google maps which is much easier to use - and you can take it with you when you go hunting.

To do this go back to the search results screen and click on Download Records (instead of View Map) and save it on the hard drive.

Text file has lines of text like this. All you want is the GPS location at the end of each line. Just copy and paste that in to Google Maps and off you go!

8915-035FL 6035 Flora Flora Solanaceae 694 Duboisia hopwoodii Pituri 10/01/1967 31/12/1985 4 L -33.735499970 143.106208219 100000.0000

I hope someone finds this useful!

Edited by whitewind

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If you want to try pituri, why not go to the desert and give something of equivalent value, to one of the homeless pituri addicts living in the Todd river bed? Because with the correct management of Dreaming it is a good way of enabling the mind to sustain life long knowledge of the way of reafforesting Earth thereafter. If you find any, remember this.

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