How a photo can spark actionable hope for nature

Nature is essential, but it is slipping away.

Current estimates suggest that up to one of every three species will be extinct by the year 2100 due to climate change and destruction of habitat.

To stop this extinction crisis, stakeholders around the world have committed to protecting wildlife habitat on 30% of the Earth’s surface by 2030, or close to 14 million square kilometers of space. This will require a tremendous mobilization of governments, conservation groups, scientists, and private landowners.

The work of protecting such a vast expanse will require a deeper understanding of the science of biodiversity and the translation of that research to practice. It will require on-the-ground conservationists to have access to more sophisticated tools to monitor and manage their work. And it will require a committed public to demonstrate their will for this ambitious agenda.

Scott Loarie has a challenge for you: go outside and take a picture of a living thing. He introduces the global community of people building a living atlas of the natural world by sharing their nature photos with scientists — and shows how you can join in on the fun.

A first step towards protecting nature is to know it. In 2000, the All Species Inventory proposed using emerging technologies to catalogue the 2 million known species in the space of a generation. The Encyclopedia of Life aimed to digitize and curate knowledge about all known species.

With the benefit of newer technologies and a radical crowdsourcing approach, iNaturalist has accelerated progress towards this goal: its global biodiversity database represents over 500,000 taxa, or roughly 25% of all known organisms (this is roughly equivalent to the collection amassed over 200 years by a natural history museum). 

In the last year, more than 300,000 taxa have been observed by iNaturalist community members. On one day in April during the City Nature Challenge, more than 1 million observations were logged, representing over 1 in every 40 species on the planet!

By putting the tools of collection and curation on anyone’s smartphone, and using AI to support human exploration of the natural world, iNaturalist is rapidly scaling and democratizing participation in a fundamental understanding—and saving—of our natural world.

iNaturalist creates actionable hope.

When we take the time to notice nature and to act, we realize we’re not alone - that fosters a shared purpose towards something bigger than the individual.

By 2030, iNaturalist will rally a community of 100 million nature explorers, who will observe more than 50% of the world’s species.

Biodiversity science will access iNaturalist’s real-time census data for all species and produce science that will inform conservation, policy, and further understanding of our world.

More than 1 million square kilometers of land will be protected by groups with projects on iNaturalist, powering two-thirds of the 30 x 30 goal.