From the field to the free web
If you've been logging observations on iNaturalist, you may already be contributing to one of the world's great citizen science projects. But your photos could be doing even more. With a few simple steps, the same images you've captured in the field can end up illustrating Wikipedia articles, enriching Wikidata, and reaching tens of millions of readers every month — permanently, at full resolution, and completely free.
Here's how it works, and why it's worth doing.
Two communities, one mission
iNaturalist and the Wikimedia ecosystem — which includes Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata — have more in common than it might seem. Both are large-scale, collaborative, open infrastructures built and maintained by volunteer communities. Both are committed to freely sharing knowledge with the world.
The connection between them deepened in 2018, when a group of contributors who cared about both platforms met at Wikimania in Cape Town and formed WikiProject Biodiversity (see WikiProject Biodiversity in Wikidata). That community has since grown into a coordinated network of people who move content between the two platforms, build tools to make it easier, and run campaigns to expand biodiversity knowledge on the open web.
Why Wikimedia Commons?
iNaturalist is wonderful, but it's not designed for long-term image preservation. Wikimedia Commons is. Here's what makes it worth the extra step:
- Full resolution preserved — iNaturalist and other platforms compress images. Commons keeps your original file at full quality.
- No upload limit — You can contribute as many freely licensed images as you like.
- Permanent — Images within scope stay there indefinitely, unlike commercial platforms, which can delete older images when accounts lapse.
- Reach — Your image can end up illustrating a Wikipedia article in dozens of languages, accessed by students, researchers, journalists, and curious people worldwide. You can check this out through GLAMorgan.
- Impact tracking — Thanks to Wikimedia's open Commons Impact Metrics API, you can see exactly how many times your images have been viewed and reused.
Getting your licence right
Before anything else, there's one thing you need to check: your image licence on iNaturalist.
Currently, the vast majority of iNaturalist observers — over 99.5% — use a default licence that isn't compatible with Wikimedia projects. The Wikimedia Foundation requires all hosted content to be freely shareable, including for commercial use. That rules out CC-BY-NC (No Commercial) and CC-BY-ND (No Derivatives) licences.
The licences that work for Wikimedia are:
- CC0 — public domain; no restrictions on reuse whatsoever
- CC-BY — reuse permitted, as long as you're credited as the photographer
- CC-BY-SA — reuse permitted with credit, and any derivative works must carry the same licence
You can change your default licence for all future observations on iNaturalist, and also apply a new licence to all your existing observations in one go. Individual images can also be relicensed separately if you prefer more control. (Note: the observation licence and the image licence are separate things — only the image licence governs how your photos can be reused.)
For a surprising number of species, an iNaturalist photo isn't just the best freely available image — it's the only one!
What makes a good Wikipedia image?
Not every iNaturalist photo is a candidate for Wikipedia, but many are. The focus is especially on species that currently lack a suitable image on Wikipedia — and these tend to be less commonly observed organisms: invertebrates, plants, fungi, and species found in Africa, Asia, South America, and other regions underrepresented in the existing photo library.
For a surprising number of species, an iNaturalist photo isn't just the best freely available image — it's the only one. iNaturalist, with its millions of observations logged by people who genuinely care about finding and documenting every living thing, is uniquely positioned to fill that gap. When you upload a freely licensed photo of an inconspicuous species, you may well be providing the first image that will ever appear on that organism's Wikipedia article.
In rough order of priority, the best images come from Research Grade observations and feature:
- A sharply focused, complete organism (adult where possible)
- Natural setting, without hands, rulers, pins, or containers in frame
- Good contrast with the background
- A single organism, oriented clearly
- A live specimen
- A large file size, especially useful when cropping will be needed
If your photo ticks most of those boxes and captures a species that's currently missing a Wikipedia image, it's genuinely valuable.
The tools that make it easy
The volunteer community behind WikiProject Biodiversity has built a set of open-source tools to make uploading from iNaturalist to Wikimedia Commons as painless as possible.
iNaturalist2Commons is a userscript that runs directly on Wikimedia Commons, letting you search for iNaturalist images without leaving the site. It has facilitated around 164,000 uploads to date.
Wiki Loves iNaturalist is a standalone web app that identifies English Wikipedia articles and Wikidata entries that could benefit from an iNaturalist image, and lets you upload directly from there. It has helped transfer around 14,600 images so far.
You can also use Wikimedia Commons' own Special:Upload feature, which whitelists iNaturalist's image host and lets you import directly via URL.
Getting involved
If you'd like to contribute, the path is straightforward:
- Update your licence on iNaturalist to CC0, CC-BY, or CC-BY-SA
- Choose your tool the iNaturalist2Commons is the quickest starting point for most people
- Upload images that meet the quality criteria, focusing on species that lack Wikipedia coverage
- Join WikiProject Biodiversity to connect with others doing this work
The community is welcoming, the tools are free and open source, and every image you contribute expands the body of freely accessible biodiversity knowledge on the internet — permanently.
Your observations are already valuable. With a licence change and a few clicks, they can reach the world.
Images
- Using the iNaturalist app in the field by Srloarie2, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Wikiproject iNaturalist WDC19 MRD by Mike Dickison, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
- Ptilotus stirlingii stirlingii by Cal Wood, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
- Picasso Bug by Alan Manson, some rights reserved (CC BY), CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
