Can Citizen Scientists Avert Australia's Biodiversity Crisis?

Can Citizen Scientists Avert Australia's Biodiversity Crisis?

In 2023, a Queenslander noticed an interesting clam in the river waters of Ipswich, a town outside of Brisbane. She took a picture and uploaded it to the citizen scientist platform iNaturalist.  The images were of freshwater gold clams, a highly invasive species that was, up to that point, found everywhere except Australia and Antarctica.  That one image triggered Australia’s new biosecurity alert service, which enabled environmental officers to…