Caledon Hills Bruce Trail Club Embraces iNaturalist

Gary Hall from the Caledon Hills Bruce Trail Club, wears many hats, as the Land Stewardship Director, Hike Leader, and iNaturalist enthusiast, Gary brings this month's journal post to you:

Prior to joining iNaturalist in May of 2019, I used to think that a Bumblebee was a bumblebee, but I’ve learned since that there are actually sixteen species of Bumble Bee in Ontario.



Northern Amber Bumblebee – photo credit – Gary Hal

I also didn’t appreciate the beauty of insects like this Goldenrod Crab Spider until I started to pay closer attention.

Goldenrod Crab Spider – photo credit – Gary Hall

For years I’ve been a nature enthusiast as well as an avid nature photographer, but it was iNaturalist that helped me enhance my observation skills.

2024 will mark my 30th year of volunteering for the Bruce Trail. This also marks my twelfth-year volunteering with the Land Stewardship Team including seven years as Land Steward Director with the Caledon Hills Bruce Trail Club. Apps like iNaturalist, Seek, Merlin, What3Words and the Bruce Trail App have become standard tools of the job.

In 2019, the Caledon Hills club formed a Biodiversity Committee. One of the committee’s objectives was to educate ourselves and others about preserving and enhancing biodiversity along the Bruce Trail corridor.

Red Eft – photo Credit Richard Smythe

We soon recognized the potential of iNaturalist and the Bruce Trail Project to help us achieve this goal. This eventually led to a successful Zoom seminar “Managing Invasive Species on our Trail” in the spring of 2020. Via this webinar, we were able to develop a list of motivated volunteers to join work parties to help manage invasive species. Before you can manage invasive species, you need to recognize what they look like. iNaturalist turned out to be the ideal tool for most of our volunteers to recognize and report locations of various invasive species.
Our second strategy was to hold a series of Nature Walks with an emphasis on observation skills to help participants better enjoy nature along the trail. Besides members of our Biodiversity Team, we have other experts leading nature walks on various themes including identification of spring ephemerals, ferns, birds, mushrooms, and insects. A spring nature walk with entomologist Jim Chaput led to many new discoveries.

Nature Walk – photo credit – Gary Hall

In the spring of 2021, we held our first iNaturalist training session via one of our nature walks. A second training session was held in July. Participants took to iNaturalist right away. It was difficult moving them beyond the parking lot.

iNaturalist Training – Photo credit – Gary Hall

We discovered that most outdoor enthusiasts are interested in nature and would like to contribute to iNaturalist, but some are hesitant because there is quite a learning curve, especially for people trying to keep up with technology. We have a bit more work to do in this area.
We learned that the “Seek” app was a good gateway to iNaturalist. Seek doesn’t need an account and is an excellent tool to help beginners learn to identify flora and fauna. Seek is an excellent tool to encourage children to engage with nature. Through the Seek App, they can earn badges as they identify more species, a good motivational tool.

Junior Naturalists – Photo credit – Sandra Green

In order to encourage more members in our club to report their findings to iNaturalist, we introduced our Caledon Hills Citizen Scientist Badge. To qualify for the badge, participants need to identify and upload one hundred species to iNaturalist. Observations may occur anywhere on the Bruce Trail and members of other BTC clubs are eligible.

Citizen Scientist Badge

One way to aovid missing our Journal Posts is to get it sent directly in your email inbox:

1) Join the Bruce Trail Conservancy's iNaturalist Project, AND
2) Check "Project Journal Posts" under your iNaturalist Account Settings > Notifications > Email Notifications.

Thank you for your interest in the Bruce Trail Conservancy and our work to preserve a ribbon of wilderness, for everyone, forever.

Posted on February 22, 2024 08:23 PM by shimeem