Ethics

Locations are shown only as precisely as it is safe to show them

Every record has a precision class. Exact locations are shown rounded to four decimal places. Generalised locations are shown at the centre of a hexagonal cell about 10 km or 50 km across, never at a random offset that could be averaged out. Restricted records show only a region. Withheld records show no location at all.

Two rules are enforced by the build and cannot be overridden by an editor. A species flagged as location-sensitive forces every record of it to a 50 km cell or coarser. A site flagged as at risk of looting forces every record from it to region only. True coordinates live in a private file that is read by one step of the build pipeline and by nothing else, and an audit scans every published file for them before any deploy.

Reconstructions are never presented as recordings

Every record carries an evidence tier from T1 (a direct record of the thing itself) to T5 (a speculative rendering). Tiers T3 to T5 are hidden on the map until a visitor switches them on, are drawn in a different fill, and carry a prominent panel naming the method, the inputs and a confidence statement.

Recordings of people are published only with documented consent. People who have not consented to be named are shown as “name withheld”. Practitioner and speaker locations are generalised for their privacy whatever the record says.

Rights and attribution

Each record names its licence, rights holder and source, with the attribution text shown exactly as the rights holder asked. Where a licence does not allow hosting, the record links to the holding archive. Where a licence does not allow derivatives, no spectrogram or trimmed copy is made.

No tracking

The site sets no cookies, loads no third-party scripts on first view, and embeds players only when a visitor clicks to load them.

Takedown and correction

If you hold rights in something shown here, or believe a location or a person is shown in a way that causes harm, write to the foundation at the address on the support page. Requests are acknowledged within seven days and the record is withheld while they are considered.