Nature Conservation encourages reporting of fauna sightings

Nature Conservation is encouraging the Margaret River community to send their fauna sightings to the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), Australia’s national recording database. The ALA currently has nearly 74 million records from across Australia, spanning over 121,000 species. However only 7% of these records are from Western Australia.

Biodiversity information on the ALA is used for research, environmental monitoring, conservation planning and management, education and citizen science activities.

Anyone wishing to add information to the ALA database by sharing their sightings must first register with the site at www.ala.org.au. Once registered records can be uploaded either via the website or by using the ALA phone app OzAtlas. Photos are useful to help validate sightings so please upload photos if you have them, alongside the other details of the record.

The ALA can also be used to explore the local area or to search for a particular species across its range. Using Margaret River as the location search area produces a map like the one shown; each point is a species sighting within a 5km radius of Margaret River townsite.

Instructions on how to explore and use the ALA are found on the website at www.ala.org.au/how-to-use-ala/

All records on the ALA are shared with the Dept of Biodiversity, Conservation & Attractions and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Visit the Atlas of Living Australia