Frequently Asked Questions

1. What internet browsers work with this web site? 2. What should I do if the application hangs up or stops? 3. Can I use popup blockers? 4. What if I have a large digital data set of observations to enter? 5. What if my application is running slow or seems to have major delays? 6. What do the different shading and hatching symbols for the latilongs mean? 7. How do I contact the Montana Natural Heritage Program with questions or feedback? 8. What type of data should be reported on TRACKER? 9. Why isn't a particular invertebrate species listed as an option for me to add an observation? 10. When you save the picture as a jpg, it automatically gave the date, but then a series of numbers after the date. What do these numbers correspond to? 11. BLM manages lands in two categories within the state, BLM lands and Bankhead-Jones lands. TRACKER only shows one class of BLM lands--why? ANSWERS 1. What internet browsers work with this web site? For now you need Internet Explorer version 6 or later to use this site. We are working out the FireFox bugs and hope to release a version that works in most of the modern browsers. 2. What should I do if the application hangs up or stops? If the display seems to "hang-up"or becomes unresponsive, we recommend that you close down your browser completely, then restart it, and start a new Tracker session. 3. Can I use popup blockers? Popup Blockers can interfere with this site. This site uses several pop up windows. You can temporarily turn off your popup blocker, or we recommend that you configure your browser to allow popup's from http://nhp.nris.mt.gov/.  View a "How To" video on temporarily Turning Off the Pop Up Blocker.  You may also view a "How To" video on permanently allowing pop up windows from the Natural Heritage web site, including TRACKER. 4. What if I have a large digital data set of observations to enter? If you have more observations to enter than is practical to do over the web, please contact Bryce Maxell at bmaxell@mt.gov or at 406 444-3655. 5. What if my application is running slow or seems to have major delays? The Natural Heritage TRACKER is a data intense application that requires a high speed internet connection. You may experience performance problems if you use a dial-up or a satellite connection. Unfortunately, we are unable to supply the large amount of map, data, and image information in the TRACKER and have it work on slow connections. 6. What do the different shading and hatching symbols for the latilongs mean? Shaded Latitude-Longitude (Latilong or LL) grid cells indicate that records within those grid cells are only spatially precise to a LL grid cell and no finer. Hatched Quarter Latilong (QLL) grid cells indicate that the records within those grid cells are only spatially precise to a QLL grid cell and no finer. Cross hatched Quarter-Quarter Latilong (QQLL) grid cells indicate that the records within those grid cells are at least spatially precise to the QQLL and possibly finer than that. Finally, LL, QLL, and QQLL cells that have no shading, hatching, or cross hatching, have no records within them. Example 1: For example, in the image to the right, the lower left and lower right latilongs do not have any records recorded. Example 2: The upper left and upper right latilongs each have at least one record that is spatially precise to only the LL scale. Example 3: The southeastern QLL of the upper right latilong has at least one record precise to that scale. Example 4: The southeastern most QQLL of the upper left latilong has at least one record precise to that scale.   7. How do I contact the Montana Natural Heritage Program with questions or feedback? You may email us at TRACKER Feedback. 8. What type of data should be reported on TRACKER? Currently all animal observations can be entered on TRACKER. However, for areas with regular observations of a particular species (e.g., a backyard birding list or area you regularly bird at) it is only appropriate to provide a summary of observations made throughout the spring-fall period (February 16th - December 14th) or for the entire winter (December 15th - February 15th). During these periods you should submit one record for a species that summarizes numbers of each observation type (breeding, migratory, over wintering, etc.). 9. Why isn't a particular invertebrate species listed as an option for me to add an observation? Some invertebrates do not appear on the lists of species because we currently do not have records for them in our databases. In these instances, please send an email to the Senior Zoologist with an observation that you have made and, if the observation is adequately documented and the species is valid for Montana, the observation and the species will be added to our databases. 10. When you save the picture as a jpg, it automatically gave the date, but then a series of numbers after the date. What do these numbers correspond to? The format is "NHTracker_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.jpg" where YYYY=Year, MM=Month, DD=Day, HH=Hours, MM=Minutes, and SS=Seconds when the image was created. 11. BLM manages lands in two categories within the state, BLM lands and Bankhead-Jones lands. TRACKER only shows one category of BLM lands--why? TRACKER uses public land ownership data from the Montana Stewardship Mapping Database that is maintained by the Natural Heritage Program . The classification of BLM lands into separate categories is not something we track in the Stewardship database. The decision was made that we did not have the resources to maintain that much detail in the database.