Changes in participant behaviour and attitudes are associated with knowledge and skills gained by using a turtle conservation citizen science app

TurtleSAT is a citizen science app that was developed to collect locations of freshwater turtles and their nests across Australia. We used an online questionnaire to investigate the consequences of using this app for participants. Specifically, we asked participants whether their knowledge of turtles and their skills improved, and whether their behaviour and attitudes towards turtles and their conservation changed after contributing turtle sightings to TurtleSAT. 148 citizen scientists completed our questionnaire, mostly from the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. They reported that after learning about the current decline in turtle populations, they adopted several turtle-friendly practices, such as habitat restoration or moving turtles out of harm’s way, underlining the importance of increasing people’s awareness on species declines.