iNaturalist:

The Eaton Canyon Biodiversity Project

Back in the early days of "safer at home" at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, I found myself spending a lot of time on iNaturalist. iNaturalist is a online citizen science or public participation website. It collects nature observations from around the world.

It quickly became obvious that Eaton Canyon needed it's own project on the citizen scientist website. An so it began.

Within the scope of the project, I discovered that over 10 thousand observations had already been made in Eaton Canyon over the last 12 years.

It became obvious that a large number were inaccurate or just needed identifying. I was going to need a lot of help with this project to get it cleaned up.

One day I noticed Mickey Long, Eaton Canyon's retired Park Superintendent was adding some identifications to observations in the canyon's observations.

I reached out to him, asking for his assistance in his free time, promising him...”No Heavy Lifting”.

For 2 ½ months we worked an average of 3-4 hours a day each and here we are, presenting our project.

Fast forward to March 2022. Here we are two year's later and the project has allowed us to have opportunities to collaborate with numerous experts. John Trader, the Huntington Garden's Desert Collection curator, Chris Wagner lichenologist, and Alan Rockefeller fungus expert to name a few who helped the project.

The community continues to embrace iNaturalist and Eaton Canyon. The number of observations have nearly doubled to over 17,000.

We have done outreach to local schools, offering suggestions for their students to get the most out of their field curriculum.

We have been able to identify and remove numerous invasive spices from the canyon.