Maps

There is no map here yet.

There was one. It showed six points on a drawing of Montana, each labelled with a species and a count and the word “Verified.” None of them were real records, and none of them were real coordinates. We took it down.

What a real one requires

• Verified records. Enough of them that a map shows a pattern rather than a handful of dots.
• Generalization on the server. Locations coarsened before the response is built — never markers hidden in the browser, which is not privacy, only decoration.
• A hard floor for sensitive species. Species of Concern snap to roughly ten kilometres regardless of what the observer chose. A precise nest or den coordinate is the exact thing that gets an animal harassed.

Today the registry asks for a county or watershed and nothing finer, so there is nothing precise to leak. When coordinates become optional, the generalization code ships before the first one is accepted — not after.