EWA supports best practices and ethics in ethnobiology:

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Following the International Society of Ethnobiology‘s Code of Ethics, EWA acknowledges that “biological and cultural harms have resulted from research undertaken without the consent of [local and] Indigenous peoples” (ISE 2006). EWA encourages work that is collaborative “in ways that support community-driven development of [local and] Indigenous peoples‘ cultures and languages, acknowledge [local and] Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights, [and] protect the inextricable linkages between cultural, linguistic and biological diversity” (ISE 2006) and asks its users to become familiar with the ISE Code of Ethics (http://www.ethnobiology.net/) as well as other Ethics Codes for their particular discipline or region before contributing material to EWA.

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EWA aims to help support a transformation in how research with and by communities is done. For example, contributors to the EWA atlas are able to control access to, and sharing of, their contributions using Cultural Protocol settings, i.e. by making them private, by sharing them with trusted community members, or by allowing open access (following the example set by the Endangered Languages Archive; also see Nathan 2010).

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Drawing on the work of those developing the Creative Commons framework and the innovative LocalContexts.org, EWA also encourages the labeling of cultural materials so that knowledge owners can indicate whether and how material may be used or adapted elsewhere. Contributors of material which they do not actually own may add a formulated label to help non–community users of traditional knowledge understand the importance and significance of this material, even when it is in the public domain and appears as though it can be shared and used by everyone. This is often not the case for traditional knowledge, and the Labels are designed to identify and clarify which material has community–specific, gendered and high–level restrictions. This is especially with respect to important sacred and/or ceremonial material. […The Labels] can be used to include information that might be considered missing‘, for instance the name of community from where it derives, what conditions of use are deemed appropriate, how to contact the relevant family, clan or community to arrange appropriate permissions. (http://www.localcontexts.org/#labels, accessed 25 February 2015) In this way EWAtlas facilitates the curation and control of ethno–ornithological materials by members of the community of origin.

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This EWA website is committed to avoiding the use of AI-generated text or images, due to the unregulated sourcing of materials used by AI systems and the exhorbitant use of energy in AI processing at a time when we need to be reducing, not increasing global emissions.