If you have been adding records to the Texas Nature Trackers Projects (Herps of Texas, Birds of Texas, etc.) for a couple of years you may have noticed a change recently. Previously, you joined the group and gave permission for your records to be added to the project and you were done. Any eligible record was automatically added to our project.

But iNaturalist has had to recently change the way projects aggregate records because it was too processing-intensive to be able to maintain with the huge number of records coming into iNat daily. So the Texas Nature Trackers managers have had to turn this auto-gathering feature off.

So you mean I have to add each record to the project individually now????

No. This doesn't mean you have to go to all 267 records of herps from your latest herping trip and add each one to the project individually. You can use the project's search tools and batch add all those records at once.

For those unfamiliar with this shortcut, here's how you do that:

• Go to the Herps of Texas Group Page and find the "Add From Your Observations" link next to the map.

• This will take you to an Edit Observations page with only your eligible observations listed (i.e. herps found in Texas that aren't already in the project). Choose the "Batch Edit" option.

• Now you will see checkboxes next to each record, but you don't have to worry about going down the list and choosing each record. Simply choose "Select All" from the top of the page and each record will be selected.

• Now that all your eligible records are selected, open the pulldown menu at the top of the page under "Add to Project" and choose the Herps of Texas project (the pulldown menu will list all the projects you have joined so you might need to scroll down if there are a lot).

• The system will do its magic and you will get a finished screen saying that your records have been added to the project. If any records are excluded because they don't qualify or are already in the project, it will let you know.

Now your new records will be included in the HOT project and you should be able to see that on your record page.

Sorry for the addition of an extra step to get your records in the project, but at least using this batch upload you don't have to add to each project one at a time. For those who upload a lot of records (mako252), this should save quite a lot of time.

Chris