Frequently asked questions

Have a question? Please look if you can find your answer here before contacting us.

I have seen something, how can I share my observation with Observation.org?

You can create an account on our platform and keep track of all you wildlife observations yourself! By joining Observation.org you contribute to our collective efforts of collecting data and learning more about nature. And you can look back at your own collections of beautiful wild life encounters over time. Visit the Starting guide to learn more about our platform.

What species have I seen?

If you have taken a picture of what you have observed, you can make use of our image recognition model called NIA. You can make use of the image recognition in our apps and on our website on the 'Add observation' screen. On the website this means that you need an account to make use of the image recognition, but you can decide not to save an observation after identification. In ObsIdentify you do not need an account and you can save up to ten observations on your phone.

How can I edit an observation?

You can still change any information of an observation at any time. Look up the observation that you want to edit in your observation list of observation overview, and click on the date to open the observation detail page. On this page, click on the blue button on the right hand side called 'Options', then select 'Edit'. Update the information you wanted to change, and click 'Save'. Done!

I cannot find my observation, where did it go?

If you are looking in your observations tab, please check to see if any filters are causing observations to not appear. You can empty the filters by clicking the button ‘Clear filters’. If you use our app Observation to add observations, make sure that you upload them to your account, as observations are first only saved on your phone.

I would like to download data, how can I do that?

We upload all our validated data to GBIF every month. We have over 100 million observations in our dataset that are available to download for research and policy purposes. You can find out more about the available datasets here:

• GBIF account Observation International | Global
• GBIF account Natuurpunt | Belgium
• GBIF account Natagora | Belgium

If your needs are not met with the data available on GBIF, it is also possible to receive custom exports. You can get in touch with us by using the contact form below.