Sep 20, 20203 min read

LIMA GETS READY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE GREAT BIO SEARCH OF THE SOUTH! September 25-28, 2020.

Updated: Nov 30, 2021

With great excitement, more than 30 Peruvian organizations are joining in the call to participate in the Great Southern Bioblitz.

This is an event that is organized for the first time, to encourage the participation of naturalists from the southern hemisphere, recording observations of wild flora and fauna using the iNaturalist application.

This event, organized in the southern spring and to be held from September 25 to 28, seeks to attract the attention of the general public to the wealth of biodiversity that exists in cities.Participants take photographs with the use of cell phones, tablets and cameras, which are uploaded to the iNaturalist internet platform, with the use of an application of the same name.

iNaturalist is an application available on iOS and Android. To date it has more than 3 million users.

The photos are the subject of the attention of specialists in species identification from around the world, who collaborate in the most exact determination possible. The records that manage to obtain a complete identification and validated by the experts, are incorporated into the international biodiversity databases of initiatives such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), allowing generate species distribution maps that help decision-making, management and conservation. In this way, observations become valuable contributions to sustainable development.

Participating is simple:

Download the iNaturalist application on your cell phone. It is available in the Android and iOS stores.
Make sure you have your cell phone wi-fi enabled and allow your photos to record the location. This will allow the cell phone to assign the location coordinates of the photo using the surrounding Wi-Fi networks as a reference.
Run the application and create a user account. You can do it using the application from your cell phone or by entering the portal https://www.inaturalist.org/
Take photos of wild plants or animals that you find in your environment. It is possible to find in gardens, parks and even, inside the home.
Upload the photos to the platform. You can do it from the cell phone. The application has a small tutorial that explains how to do it. Or you can transfer your photos to the pc and upload them directly to the portal.
The application will suggest the IDs of your photos. In some cases it will be almost certain and in others it will suggest several options with which it finds them similar. Do not worry about the identification, just give them the name that the application suggests or do not do it, because once on the platform the specialists will help you identify the species.

The organization of the event in Peru is in charge of Grupo RANA, a non-governmental organization that is developing conservation and environmental education projects in various locations in the country, and Ciencia Ciudadana Peru, a non-governmental organization that has led similar events and promotes awareness-raising projects. environment in the country. Both organizations are leading the initiative to participate with the city of Lima and hope to be able to motivate the future participation of other cities in the country in upcoming events.