Exciting Next Step for iNaturalist!

We’re excited to share the news that iNaturalist is now an independent nonprofit.

The entity behind the global iNaturalist Network, was run in partnership with the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic up until this point. Both organizations were amazing in all their work to make iNaturalist the success it is today. Our relationship as iNaturalist Canada, along with the other 20 countries with their own versions, remains the same with the global iNaturalist Network and the platform you have come to know and love won’t change with the new organizational structure.

iNaturalist and the data within it can still be accessed free of charge, and all of the features the contributors love about it will remain the same.

Since its launch in 2008 (and our launch here in Canada in 2015), iNaturalist has grown a vibrant community of people who care about biodiversity, and the data generated by the community serves as an essential source for research and conservation decisions around the world.

The Canadian Wildlife Federation is proud to be the lead of iNaturalist Canada and member of the iNaturalist Network. Our partnership with iNaturalist as well as Parks Canada and NatureServe Canada supports the iNaturalist Canada platform. This arrangement allows people from Canada to tap into the powerful global Naturalist community to share and identify observations and provide invaluable biodiversity data for research and conservation.

As a result, our Canadian iNaturalist community has been able to contribute more than 10 million observations, second only to the United States on the global scale! We’ve enabled numerous research projects, conservation actions and species at risk occurrences/assessments, thanks to our combined efforts.

The new organizational structure will enable the support of iNaturalist for years to come as the iNaturalist community continues to expand our collective knowledge of biodiversity long into the future, and the Canadian Wildlife Federation looks forward to growing along with iNaturalist, as they enter the next phase of their organizational development.

To learn more about this transition, visit the post on the iNaturalist.org blog and read through their iNaturalist as a Nonprofit FAQ.

Posted on July 13, 2023 08:16 PM by jpage_cwf