Legal & Policies

The aim of this site is to provide an information gateway about our community. This page helps you understand how the site works and the requirements we have in place for its usage.

Some features of this site are provided by third parties, and as such we have no control over their policies or behaviours — we'd remind all users to be aware of their own online activities. Links to all our third-party providers and their policies are below.

Privacy Policy

This website has been designed so that we do not require personal information for it to run. While your IP may be logged at a server level, we do not store this in a way that we can use to identify you as a user.

When you visit our website, our web server — like most web servers — automatically collects the following types of information:

• Your Internet Protocol (IP) address
• The number of users who visit the website
• The date and time of each visit
• The pages accessed
• The type of browser used
• The links you click
• The features you use
• The content and images you select
• How you arrived at our pages

Some of this information may be used to prevent spam and other unwanted visitors.

Visitor statistics

We count page views on our own server so we can see which parts of the site are useful. This is deliberately built to be anonymous:

• No cookies are set and nothing is stored on your device.
• No third party is involved — the figures never leave our server, and there is no Google Analytics or similar service on this site.
• Your IP address is never stored. It is combined with your browser details and a secret value, then turned into a one-way code that cannot be turned back into an address.
• That code changes every night, so you cannot be recognised or followed from one day to the next.
• We record only the page visited, the website that linked you here (never the search terms), and rough device details such as “mobile” and “Safari”.
• If your browser sends a Do Not Track signal, we record nothing at all.

If you use the contact form, the details you submit (name, email, message) are stored so we can respond to you, and you receive an email copy of your message. They are not shared with anyone else.

The contact form is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that a person rather than a script is sending the message. Your browser talks to Cloudflare while that check runs; your name, email and message are not sent to them. Turnstile sets no cookies and is not used anywhere else on this site — see Third-Party Providers below.

Comments Policy

Where community interaction is available on this site, the ground rules are simple:

• Be polite — don't be rude to anyone, and respect others. If something you intend to say would cause grief offline, please don't say it here. There's a person behind the screen, and your words affect people.
• Don't troll — criticism is welcome, but comments that add no value or are merely insulting or aggressive will be removed without exception.
• Spam — is not wanted. Every effort is made to prevent it, and any that slips through will be removed as soon as humanly possible.

Note: these guidelines may be revised or updated at any time, without notice.

Third-Party Providers

Third-party providers are websites or systems other than those we run, and as such we have no control over their policies or behaviours. We monitor these providers and listen to our users, and may change a provider when needed to ensure the best service.

• iNaturalist Australia — observation feeds; we encourage others to list their own observations. Visit inaturalist.ala.org.au · privacy policy
• Flickr — hosts some of our images and provides the community photo feeds. Visit flickr.com · privacy policy
• YouTube & Vimeo — host some video content embedded on species and activity pages; their cookies apply when you play a video.
• OpenStreetMap — provides the map tiles used on location and species pages. Privacy policy
• Cloudflare Turnstile — checks that the contact form is being used by a person and not an automated script. It runs only on the contact page, sets no cookies and does not track you across sites; your browser contacts Cloudflare while the check runs. Privacy policy

Images & Other Media

This site uses a number of images and other media within its content. Ownership of media remains with its original owner, and in most cases links to the original source are provided.

• iNaturalist Australia — some content feeds are provided by iNaturalist Australia; follow the links to review their licensing.
• Flickr — used for content feeds and image hosting throughout this site; licences can be found by following the media links.
• YouTube / Vimeo — some video content is hosted externally; licensing is available via the media links.