African Wildlife Environment Issue 75 FINAL

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Your portal into nature and becoming a citizen sceintist iNATURALIST

T raditionally, one would flip through a field guide to find the name of a species. However, these guides are full of jargon unfamiliar to amateur naturalists, making a rapid and valid identification a challenge (assuming that you can afford the field guide or that it is in your nearest library, in the first place). Of course, field guides only have a fraction of species, and usually only one photo of each. In our digital age, why can’t amateur naturalists share their observations of wildlife with experts worldwide? iNaturalist is changing the way we interact with nature, how we exchange our data with experts, and how users conserve and describe data collected in nature. What is iNaturalist? iNaturalist is an online social media network created in 2008 by a group of students from Berkeley’s School of Information as part of a final year master’s project. In 2014, it became an initiative of the Californian School of Sciences in collaboration with National Geographic. iNaturalist provides a place to record and organize nature findings, meet other nature enthusiasts, and learn about the natural world. It can be used by anyone with an internet connection ranging fromhikers, birders, beach combers, mushroom foragers, park rangers, ecologists, fishermen and scientists. This allows people of different levels of expertise to share their knowledge of nature, an opportunity for amateurs and experts to interact at a level never previously possible. The creators originally intended to use iNaturalist to promote awareness of biodiversity and encourage the public to explore nature. Whereas it has done this superbly, iNaturalist, has also soon become an effective way for scientists to collect and manage invaluable large-scale biodiversity information. Currently, data from iNaturalist has been published in over 60 journal With South Africa’s spectacular and world- renowned wildlife, it is very easy to be curious about our natural environment. However, with so few experts it is difficult to get identifications and information on the creatures and plants that live around us.

By Megan Smith & Tony Rebelo

articles. In South Africa, the data is specifically used by citizen science-based programs such as CREW (Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers), SeaKeys, BirdAtlas, LepiMap, and Karoo BioGaps that monitor populations of species, especially those that are threatened, across southern Africa. Project leaders work closely with volunteers to record observations and obtain specific information used to map species distributions and update their IUCN threatened status in South Africa. This is, in turn, fed to conservation and land use planners to effectively conserve our wildlife. How does it work? Using iNaturalist can be simplified into three main steps: 1) discover wildlife, 2) record it, and 3) share it to exchange information such as identity, ecology and status. In order to use iNaturalist, all you need is a camera (your smartphone is perfect), a means to upload your observation (a computer or smartphone) and an internet connection. iNaturalist provides applications for your smartphone (and 'Seek' for kids) to record and upload observations in one simple step. Locality data is essential, but the application manages this, so no need for GPS devices and maps, although you can use them if you prefer. Observations can even be based on sounds. It is of course important that an identification can be made from a photograph. Different organisms have different requirements, but you will soon discover, via other users, what these are. For instance, a rule of thumb for plants is to always to take at least three main

35 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 75 (2020)