Orchisauvage.fr: an ambitious participatory science project supporting the knowledge and conservation of wild orchids

Orchisauvage.fr is a collaborative project which aims at collecting and sharing orchid data throughout France using ITC and Internet tools. It is coordinated by the French Orchid Society (SFO). Its main objectives are conservation and knowledge sharing on orchid's data. This project is open to everyone. It covers the whole country (France mainland and Corsica). The data collected by the members are uploaded on line. The web site is user friendly. Data can be shared between all participants. The use of recorded data is regulated. Uploaded data are checked out through a validation process (experts). Since its release in February 2014. It has encountered a significant success with more than 1 000 registered people and about 80 000 orchid observations. The data providers are new and much younger then the initial SFO members. More than 80 %, are new, with 5 times more people under 40 years old than in the initial membership. Motivations of these new contributors will be discussed, in order to adapt Orchisauvage to their needs and expectations and to enable them to take part into the whole process. Orchisauvage is managed by volunteers. The web site coordinators and data providers are working on ways to keep a high rate of participation, expand the involvement in all steps of the web based project and understand the benefit of such a participatory science project. The second part of the 217 session discussion will help us to explore future developments aiming at sharing and merging data between different NGO's and stakeholders. It will look at how to disseminate the recorded information and how to develop new on-line tools (GIS, stats, communication,…) made available to participants, such as links to conservation actions and members pages.