Welcome, iNaturalist Ecuador!

We are pleased to officially announce the launch of iNaturalist Ecuador! Ecuador’s Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INABIO) is the newest partner in the international iNaturalist Network. INABIO played a key role in organizing the Amazonian city of Tena’s participation in the City Nature Challenge earlier this year (Reto Naturalista Urbano Tena 2019). The overall participation in Ecuador has increased substantially already with INABIO’s encouragement of the community, which is evident in the iNaturalist World Tour post for Ecuador.

Ecuador is home to astounding biodiversity that ranks it easily in the top 10 most biodiverse countries. This is especially impressive considering that there are 72 countries in the world with greater land area. Many species remain undescribed or poorly known, so there is great potential and need to broadly cultivate the skills of biodiversity observation and identification. Thanks to INABIO’s leadership, iNaturalist Ecuador is well positioned to foster the next generation of talented Ecuadorian biologists.

The iNaturalist Network has seven nationally-focused sites that are fully connected and interoperable with the global iNaturalist site. Roughly in the order that they joined, the other sites are: NaturaLista Mexico, iNaturalist NZ — Mātaki Taiao (formerly NatureWatch NZ), iNaturalist Canada, Naturalista Colombia, Biodiversity4All (Portugal), and iNaturalist Panamá. Any iNaturalist user can log in on any of the sites using their same credentials and will see the same notifications.

The iNaturalist Network model allows for localizing the iNaturalist experience to better support communities on a national scale and local leadership in the movement, without splitting the community into isolated, national sites. The iNaturalist team is grateful to the outreach, training, translations, and user support carried out through the efforts of the iNaturalist Network member institutions. You can read more about Network here.

Posted on 22 de agosto de 2019, 08:21 PM by carrieseltzer