News at a glance: Diphtheria treatment shortage, prisoner release, and iNaturalist ’s growth

CONSERVATION Popular biodiversity app to expand The nonprofit that runs iNaturalist, a popular app and website for identifying species, has received a $10 million grant to expand. The funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, announced last week, will allow iNaturalist—whose website is one of the largest generators of crowd-sourced species-occurrence data—to add users, technology, and observations to inform conservation. iNaturalist hopes to grow in nature-rich parts of the world, such as Asia and South America, which have fewer users uploading data. Since iNaturalist’s founding in 2008, the platform has recorded more than 150 million verified observations, and its data have been tapped in more than 4000 scientific papers. The nonprofit has a $3 million budget. HUMAN RIGHTS Conservationist released by Iran The five U.S. citizens released by Iran this week in a controversial prisoner swap include businessman Morad Tahbaz, jailed in 2018 on charges that a wildlife conservation group he co-founded was spying. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had accused him and eight other people affiliated with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit in Tehran, of using wildlife camera traps to spy on military installations. Hundreds of conservationists and scholars from 66 countries protested the charges, which the administration of former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani determined were unfounded...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news