About ConservaNode
Every week, the United States government publishes hundreds of pages of dense legal notices about endangered animals, shrinking habitats, and wildlife protection laws. Almost nobody reads them—because they are buried in small-print bureaucracy and Latin species names. ConservaNode turns those public records into a visual, plain-English web that anyone can explore.
1. From Dense Government Notices to a Living Wildlife Map
When federal agencies protect a river turtle in Florida, update sea otter rules in Alaska, or adopt international trade protections for giraffes and pangolins, they publish an official notice in the U.S. Federal Register. ConservaNode reads those public-domain notices, matches Latin scientific names to everyday English animal names, and connects every species to the places where it lives and the laws that protect it.
2. What Is Inside This Early Prototype (v0.1.0)
ConservaNode is an early prototype built from 0 Federal Register notice records (0 unique government documents). Across those notices, our system identified 0 wildlife species & plants, 0 habitats & geographic places, and 0 conservation laws:
What You Will Find Here
Official Wildlife Protection Rules: Endangered and threatened species listings, special 4(d) conservation rules, habitat range descriptions, CITES international treaty updates, and agency responsibilities published in the U.S. Federal Register.
What Is Not Here Yet
Courtroom Trafficking Cases: This first release covers regulatory rules and protections, not criminal smuggling prosecutions. Enforcement case records from the Department of Justice and USFWS Office of Law Enforcement are planned for a future phase.
3. Three Ground Rules You Can Trust
Many AI websites summarize documents without showing their work—or worse, invent connections that aren't really there. ConservaNode is built around three strict guardrails:
1. Reports of Public Records, Never Accusations
Every entry on ConservaNode is a neutral summary of an official U.S. government document, linked directly to its source on federalregister.gov. Nothing on this site is an accusation or allegation of wrongdoing.
2. Zero Named People—Ever
We never store, index, or display the names of individual people, suspects, vessels, or private citizens. Personal names are blocked at the database level and checked by an automated privacy scrubber on every build.
3. Honest Labels on Every Connection
We never use fake percentage "confidence scores." Instead, every link is badged STATED (written directly in the same sentence) or INFERRED (both appear in the same notice), and we avoid linking unrelated wildlife through giant country hubs.
STATED) vs. shared-notice (INFERRED) links. Right: How our graph avoids lumping unrelated animals together through huge country hubs.
4. How Accurate Is It? (Human-Checked Numbers & Honest Limits)
We tested our extraction pipeline (powered by a small, cost-efficient Gemini Flash model and checked against the global GBIF Biodiversity Catalogue and U.S. Census Gazetteer) against human-reviewed benchmark documents. We only ship categories that pass a strict ≥90% precision bar on species and places:
| What We Extract | Development Test (40 Notices) | Independent Heldout Test (10 Notices) | Quality Gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Animals & Plants (SPECIES) | 100.0% precision (85 correct, 0 false alarms, 1 missed) | 94.7% human-verified (18 of 19 confirmed right) | PASS (≥90.0%) |
| Habitats & Places (PLACE) | 97.1% precision (68 correct, 2 false alarms, 21 missed) | 100.0% human-verified (13 of 13 confirmed right) | PASS (≥90.0%) |
| Public Agencies (AGENCY) | 100.0% precision (50 correct, 0 false alarms) | 100.0% precision (10 correct, 0 false alarms) | PASS |
| Conservation Laws (STATUTE) | 84.1% precision (37 correct, 7 false alarms) | 100.0% precision (7 correct, 0 false alarms) | PASS |
Known Limitations in Seed Release v0.1.0
- How Much of Each Notice Was Read: In this v0.1.0 seed release, 50 of 66 notice records were extracted from their published summary (title and abstract), and 16 records were extracted from the first 3,500 characters of the full notice. If an animal or state isn't listed on a notice page, it may simply appear deeper in the full document. (Full-document reading is prepared for v0.2.)
- Shared-Notice Links (
INFERRED): About 70.3% of connections in the dataset mean two items were discussed in the same notice (INFERRED) rather than linked in a single sentence (STATED). - Small Benchmark Samples: Our accuracy numbers come from 40 development notices and 10 heldout notices (the 10-notice heldout split was tested once and permanently retired so we never "teach to the test").
- Omitted Categories: Experimental categories for trade commodities (
COMMODITY) and enforcement action types (ACTION_TYPE) were less reliable in testing and are left out of this release.
5. Open Public Data & Contact
Public Domain Dedication: All underlying Federal Register notices are public-domain works of the U.S. Federal Government, and our compiled ConservaNode dataset is intended for release under the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. You can also inspect our cryptographic audit trail on the Data Quality & Audit Governance page.
Questions, Corrections, or Feedback: Spot a common name that could be clearer or a fact that needs a second look? Email the project maintainer at admin@conservanode.com.