iNaturalist has separated from the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic Society and become its own independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
March 30th, 2021, 6:00AM / BY Anna Torres
Participate in the City Nature Challenge by spotting and recording animals and plants in your city starting Apr 30. (Katja Schulz)
A special performance of “A Passion for the Planet,” the City Nature Challenge and an evening with Howard Youth; stream these free programs and more this April through the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
Sixth Annual Mother Tongue Film Festival
Ongoing The film “Garifuna in Peril” will be screened alongside other films during the Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival. (Ruben Reyes)
Celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity by tuning in to the Smithsonian’s Mother Tongue Film Festival. This year, the Festival features 45 films in 39 languages from around the globe, highlighting the crucial role languages play in our daily lives. The Festival will be hosted entirely online with monthly screenings through May.
Sri Lanka’s budding biologists get their science on with iNaturalist
by Malaka Rodrigo on 11 March 2021
iNaturalist, a global citizen science platform where users collaborate to identify uploaded photos of fauna and flora, saw its observations from Sri Lanka hit the 50,000 mark, the second-highest in South Asia and 14th in Asia.
Sri Lanka’s first observation was uploaded in 2011, but it was only in the past two years that a significant increase in observations were recorded, with more young naturalists getting involved in the global initiative.
The country’s iNaturalist observations have already led to the identification of a range of overlooked species, proving the tool’s successful use in processing field observations.