Please join the Friends of the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park Friday, April 28 – Monday, May 1, for a Wilderness Park BioBlitz in conjunction with the City Nature Challenge!
What is a BioBlitz?
A BioBlitz is a communal citizen-science effort to record as many species as possible within a designated location and time period. It’s a great opportunity to meet other naturalists, scientists, and curious members of the public to meet in person in the great outdoors and learn about the plants and animals that live in the Wilderness Park.
How will the BioBlitz work?
Observers will look for plants and animals in the Park, take a photo (or multiple photos) of an organism, and upload the photos to iNaturalist. You can take photos with either your smartphone or a camera.
What is 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!
If you’ll be taking photos with your smartphone, do the following before arriving on at the Park 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. Once you’ve signed up, you can enter observations from either your phone or computer.
- Go to the Apple Store or the Google Play store and download the iNaturalist app. You can then upload your photos to iNaturalist right from your phone. This video shows you how:
If you’ll be taking photos with a camera, you will upload them later through the web interface. This video shows you how:
Are guides or tutorials available for iNaturalist?
- The iNaturalist site has a really good explanation here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started
The page also has links to video tutorials. - We also have two printer-friendly handouts created from the iNaturalist guide:
iNaturalist Getting Started Guide for Android
iNaturalist Getting Started Guide for iPhone - Volunteers from the Friends will be at the Wilderness Park on Saturday, April 29, from 9:00 AM–3:00 PM to help you with iNaturalist and any BioBlitz questions you may have!
How do I add my observations to the BioBlitz record?
You don’t need to do anything to add your observations to the BioBlitz record. All observations made in the Park on the BioBlitz day will be automatically collected and added to the City Nature Challenge and Biota of the Wilderness Park projects.
We hope you’ll join us for the BioBlitz!
Friends of the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park 