iNaturalist - citizen science project for Landguard launched

Landguard Nature Reserve celebrated its 50th birthday in 2023... and to honour this milestone and raise awareness of the Nature Reserve and the many species it supports, we have launched a citizen science project using the iNaturalist app, to encourage visitors to identify the species they see and help us create a visual record.

What is iNaturalist?
iNaturalist is a lot of different things, but at its core, iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about 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.

How can you get involved?
- So far 33 people have signed up and are actively contributing to the project. Between them 334 observations have been made and 170 species identified!
- We are challenging people to try and record 50 different species to mark 50 fabulous years.
- All you need to do is sign up to iNaturalist using your smartphone or computer, using this link: www.inaturalist.org and download the app on your phone via Android Google Play or Apple App Store.
- Then whilst you are out and about at Landguard, take pictures of species you would like to identify and upload to the iNaturalist app.
- Any species uploaded can be viewed by other observers who will verify your sighting and your observation will be added to the Landguard Nature Reserve project.

To see how we are doing so far you can use the following link to check: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/landguard-nature-reserve-felixstowe... or use the QR code in the picture above. Please do join us in helping to visually record species at Landguard. We would love you to get involved!