A Video of Mazatlán's 2019 City Nature Challenge

I’ll keep this brief because it’s already taken me way too long to get this video out.

A few years ago, my friend Liam O’Brien (@robberfly) - who I met through iNaturalist - told me about his recent trip to Paco’s Reserva de flora y fauna in Mazatlán, Mexico, and about the incredible naturalists he met there, such as Paco, Sr. and Paco, Jr, and Diego Barrales. It sounded like an incredible experience. So when Liam invited me to come along for this year’s City Nature Challenge, I was really excited to make my first big trip to Mexico, as well as record some video of the proceedings. 

It was an extraordinary few days, and everyone I met was incredibly warm, kind, and inviting, in addition to being an incredible naturalist. Some had traveled from other parts of Mexico, others were local, but we were all united by a love of nature and a perhaps slightly obsessive drive to document it all. My Spanish is pretty much non existent, but we could still communicate via scientific names and excited gestures despite the language barrier.  

It was amazing to watch everyone pile into the van after a hike and immediately start opening up the iNat app; some discussed their finds, while at least one other person was always checking in on how Mazatlán was stacking up against the other cities. The community aspect of iNaturalist is, I believe, truly its greatest strength, and I could see it in action all around me. 

What follows is a short montage of clips from the Mazatlán City Nature Challenge, 2019, and comments by some of the participants. I’m working on another video that’s focused more on Paco’s Reserva and their use of iNaturalist - hopefully it’ll be done sooner rather than later. English and Spanish subtitles are available for the video, just click the little “CC” logo on the bottom row of controls. 

A huge thank you to the amazing work that has been done to build the iNaturalist/Naturalista community in Mexico and everywhere around the world, to the organizers of the City Nature Challenge, and to everyone in Mazatlán who so graciously showed me around and let me stick a camera in their face.

Posted on August 2, 2019 06:01 AM by tiwane