what is iNatualist
iNaturalist is a free platform—both a website and app—to record observations of plants and animals in nature using photographs; share what you’ve found; and contribute to a global dataset of biodiversity information used for both science and conservation.
iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature
our primary goal in operating iNaturalist is to connect people to nature,
It’s also a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool. You can use it to record your own observations, get help with identifications, collaborate with others to collect this kind of information for a common purpose, or access the observational data collected by iNaturalist users.
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#general1
Why use iNaturalist
- it’s Fun 🙂
- it will help identify things you don’t know the name for
- you can learn more about the things you see
- adding records makes you a Citizen Scientist
- Records are available to local projects like the BS postcode groups
- records are shared with Bristol environmental Records Centre
- records are shared with the National Nature Atlas
How to use iNatualist
the iNaturalist site has lots of guidance
a getting started guide https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting%252Bstarted
and great video tutorials https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video%252Btutorials
Join a local Group – Bristol’s postcode Based Wildlife Groups
to add records to a local group, just record as normal and the records will automatically appear in the group’s project unless you’ve set them to hidden ( for example if you’re recording a protected species like a great crested newt)
City Nature Challenge 29th April to 2nd May 2022
The City Nature Challenge is taking place this year from 29th April to 2nd May and everyone is invited to take part! This is an international initiative designed to assess the state of our biodiversity in urban areas, with over 400 cities participating worldwide and 14 of them in the UK, including Bristol hosted by Bristol Natural History Consortium
