September 7, 2021 marks the third official celebration of California Biodiversity Day, an annual event created in 2018 to celebrate the state’s exceptional biodiversity and encourage actions to protect it. This year organizations throughout the state are hosting California Biodiversity Day events from September 4 to September 12, 2021, and the City of Claremont Park Rangers together with the Friends of the Wilderness Park be celebrating in the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park on the morning of Saturday, September 11.
Join us on Saturday morning, September 11th and learn how to use your phone to record observations of Wilderness Park flora and fauna with iNaturalist! Just look for the canopy near the North Mills entrance for more information! All iNaturalist observations made in California from September 4 – September 12 will automatically be added to the California Biodiversity Day 2021 iNaturalist project.
Already an iNaturalist user?
Please come and help show others to use the iNaturalist app! Contact Vicki Salazar, our Volunteer Coordinator, at vickisalazar01@gmail.com, to let her know when you will be able to come. (Please note that all Friends of the Wilderness Park volunteers are required to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19.)
New to iNaturalist?
iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. iNaturalist is a collaboration between National Geographic and the California Academy of Sciences. Anyone can participate in iNaturalist!
Before arriving on Saturday please:
- Go to iNaturalist.org and create a free account. You should see “SIGN UP” featured prominently on the homepage. Otherwise, there’s a “Sign Up” link in the top right corner.
- On your smart phone, go to the Apple Store or the Google Play store and download the iNaturalist app.
Once you’ve signed up, you can enter observations from either your phone or computer. The iNaturalist site has a really good explanation here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started
The page also has links to video tutorials.
In addition, we have two printer-friendly handouts created from the iNaturalist guide:
The Wilderness Park Biota Project:
In addition to the “California Biodiversity Day” project, any observations you make in the Wilderness Park (at any time) will be automatically added to the “Biota of the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park” project. This project was created by the Friends of the Wilderness Park specifically for documenting the plants and animals of the Wilderness Park.
If you’d like to check out the CHWP project and see what’s already been reported, just go to:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biota-of-the-claremont-hills-wilderness-park
A few tips for best practices:
- If feasible, crop your photos to feature the subject, especially if it’s not clear whether the subject is the bird or the tree, for example.
- Include a little description. For one thing, you can use the description to say what’s the subject. But you can also note any additional details, interesting behavior, type of habitat, odors, etc. that may not be obvious from the photo.
- Give the most specific ID you can, even if it’s not to the species level. For instance, “insect”, “snake”, or even “plant” or “animal” is better than just having “unknown”.
- Give a little info about yourself in your profile – it increases your credibility.
Friends of the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park 