iNaturalist: A Fun Tool for Nature Exploration

My current obsession is iNaturalist, which is an App for identifying plants and animals around you while generating data for science and conservation. It is easy to use and fun, adding another layer of enjoyment to being outdoors.

After a bit of research I found this concept started as the Master's final project of Ken-ichi Ueda, Nate Agrin, and Jessica Kline at UC Berkeley's School of Information. Well done folks! With the help of other collaborators in 2023, iNaturalist became an independent nonprofit organisation.

You can use it separately or use it with others to do Bioblitz where you collectively observe and document the natural world in a specific place. Any way we can promote interest and passion for the natural world is good for me.

This adds a bit of competitive fun too as you see the number of observations adding up and can challenge yourself to get 5 per walk (or more).

I would like to give appreciation to the creators and also Kyle Campbell who has so far logged 141887 observations—how cool to have seen so many living things and actually paid attention to them!

Thank you iNaturalist!