Another year, another Year In Review! 2019 was another record-breaking year for iNaturalist, as you can see in the site-wide growth stats, with continued exponential growth in observations and users:

Once again, we have City Nature Challenge to thank for a lot of that growth, which was a real doozie this year, bringing in 920k+ observations by almost 40k people of 32k+ species! No doubt it will top a million next year. CNC organizers, give yourself a pat on the back (there are hundreds of you at the city level, but @kestrel, @rebeccafay, and @lhiggins paved the way and lead the international coordination). We're also continuing to see strong growth from countries in the iNaturalist Network, particularly Mexico and Canada, but also members who joined this year like Argentina, Ecuador, and Australia. However, I'm always most intrigued by growth in areas where we have no direct collaborators, and I think Russia takes the prize in that category this year, where we had a huge surge in participants and observations. We suspect this is at least partly due to the recruitment efforts of the Flora of Russia project and its organizers at Moscow University Herbarium (mostly @apseregin), but I feel like we also need to thank @katya for translating an extraordinary proportion of the site, the apps, and Seek into Russian.

That's a good segue into translation! We added a table of translators to the Year In Review this year, largely because I dedicated a lot of time this Fall to making the site more translatable and replying to questions and comments from translators. Of which there are quite a few! Special shoutout to @wouterkoch for pretty much single-handedly translating the entire site into Norwegian Bokmål (and for answering some questions I had about what languages people speak in Norway). What you can't see in that table is how fast some folks are at translating! Usually when we post new text, it gets translated into Russian (@katya), Italian (@danieleseglie), Turkish (@sakatur & menver), Danish (NCAA & Lekkim), and more, usually within 24 hours. Almost all of these folks are volunteers, so our heartfelt thanks to all of you for making iNat better for people all around the world.

Another addition to the Year In Review this year is streaks! Some of you may remember I wrote a blog post about this WAY back. Well, surprise surprise, @jmaughn is still having an incredible run, but @sambiology is right behind him:

I was going to add this chart to the individual stats pages, but honestly it wasn't that interesting because most people don't go on streaks of more than a few days (@atlnature made this neat thing if you're curious about your own streaks). Jim and Sam have both added an observation a day for more than 1,700 days. That's over four and a half years. Might I also add that they are both exceedingly knowledgable naturalists and a pleasure to hang out with in the field?

Also, can we hear it for Seek? We hired @abhasm and @albullington last year to completely redesign and rebuild Seek from the ground up, and @alexshepard, @budowski, @pleary, and @gvanhorn did a ton of work to shrink our computer vision model down so it could fit on a phone and work offline. Seek currently has 514k installations on iOS and 379k on Android, and we hear great stories about it almost daily, often from people who have never heard of iNat or would never use it, so we really think we're helping a different demographic get outside. I just want to point out how proud I am of Amanda and Abhas, both of whom are working on app development for the first time since transitioning out of other careers, and yet did a phenomenal job on this app with practically zero oversight. Amazing work.

Other updates from the team: @carrieseltzer scaled the walls of accounting and marketing to bring you the iNat Store so we can all finally have the iNat t-shirts we so richly deserve, and the Monthly Supporters program, which is a small but growing part of the income that pays our bills. @tiwane ran herd on the Forum, mediated many disputes, and bounced around the world spreading the love of iNat far and wide. @alexshepard juggled computer vision training with iPhone app development with aplomb, and @budowski tolerated my incessant issue-filing on Android. @pleary (in addition to computer vision stuff) superheroically kept our servers running despite all that exponential growth, insane events like CNC, and a nearly constant onslaught of bots and scrapers downloading iNat photos en masse (downloads that we have to pay for, even though there's not too much we can do to prevent it). Since Patrick hasn't been free to do much user-facing feature development this year, here's a good chart depicting what he has been doing:

Conclusion: we should all be greateful Ken-ichi isn't running the servers. @loarie hustled hard to secure the rest of our funding while tackling taxonomic monsters for "fun," and I... complained a lot. And broke some stuff. And maybe fixed some stuff.

Finally, a huge and hearty THANK YOU to you and everyone in the iNat community from everyone on staff. As I try to emphasize in every talk I give and every conversation I have about iNat, none of it works with people getting outside and recording observations, and folks inside (or on the train, or waiting in line, or when they're supposed to be working) adding identifications. iNat is and has always been a group of people who love nature and helping each other learn about it, and everything else, the data, the maps, the charts, the machine learning models, the scientific papers, and the enormous privilege we on staff have to work on this stuff full-time, derives from that communal effort and that fundamental sense of wonder about all the other creatures with whom we share this world. So again, thank you. Here's to another year of exploration in 2020, and yea, another decade of the same.

P.S. Protip: you can play with the data behind any of these Year In Review pages by appending .json to the URL, e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/stats/2019.json

Hey folks, we updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service for iNaturalist last week. Here’s an overview of the noteworthy changes:

Privacy Policy

• Clarified that direct messages between iNaturalist users can be viewed by staff if issues arise and should not be considered private correspondence

• Updated the list of named data processors to reflect changes in the analytics services used to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot problems with infrastructure

• Updated the list of data processors we work with to facilitate optional activities such as posting to the forum, making a donation, or purchasing from the store

• Address the kinds of data shared with members of the iNaturalist Network

• Explicitly note that most information shared with iNaturalist is public by default (i.e. published on the Internet)

• Updated instructions for obtaining parental permission for users age 12 and under (via http://www.inaturalist.org/user_parents/new)

• Explicitly note that we train machine learning models on data you contribute

Terms of Service

• Added National Geographic

• Clarifies that the Terms also apply to iNaturalist Network sites

• Removed references to payments and refunds, since iNaturalist is free to use

Seek Privacy Policy

Rewritten to clarify that the core functionality of Seek shares almost no data, but that when optionally posting to iNaturalist, the iNaturalist Privacy Policy applies.

Ok, some detail for those interested:

Staff Can View Your Direct Messages

We rarely do this, and we really, really don’t like doing it because it feels super creepy, but we can and will do this in cases where inappropriate behavior has been reported, such as abuse, stalking, spam, etc. In general, the only thing that is truly private to you and impossible to see even for iNat staff is your password.

Data Processors

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires us to enumerate what third parties we share personal information with. Some of these, like the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, are impossible to avoid if we want to distribute our apps in those venues (it’s impossible to distribute an iPhone app anywhere other than the App Store, and distributing the Android app in venues other than the Google Play Store means most people would never see our app). Other processors, like New Relic and Google Firebase, are services we choose to use because they provide enormous value in monitoring our software and fixing bugs (particularly in the mobile apps). As detailed in the Privacy Policy, we do not share Your iNaturalist User ID, User name, email address, or name with any of these services, but we may share IP addresses, User-Agent strings (text that describes the software making a network connection), and information relating to software stability (e.g. information about software crashes) and behavior (e.g. the sequence of screens visited). That said, we realize some people do not want to share that info so we’re working on a way to opt-out.

Network Member Data Sharing

There’s no real change here, we’ve just tried to make it clearer that when you choose to associate with a member of the iNat Network (i.e. any site other than iNaturalist.org), the people and organizations associated with that Network Member can access coordinates that you have chosen to hide from public view and your email address, as described in your account settings. As trusted partners with which we have formal agreements, we may also share with them coordinates for observations that are automatically hidden from public view, for non-commercial research and conservation purposes.

Machine Learning

Automatic species suggestions (in the mobile apps, in the species autocomplete on the website, in Seek) are all powered by machine learning models we’ve trained on iNat photos and identifications. That hasn’t changed, but we wanted to make it clear that it is happening.

As always, we’re happy to answer any questions you have about these documents, or about data privacy specifically.

Our Observation of the Week is this Balanophora laxiflora plant, seen in Taiwan by @tsaiyuwu!

Back in 2002, Tsai-yu Wu took part in “a staff trip to the lovely mountains and forests. In Taiwan, we do have a lot of beautiful mountains and forests.” Tsai-yu had just purchased a digital camera (the Sony P9, with four megapixels of resolution according to DP Review) and this was their first field trip with it. The photo you see above was the 284th photo taken with that camera.

A member of the family Balanophoraceae, Balanophora laxiflora is a parasitic plant, and you would really only notice it when it sends its fungi-like red inflorescences into the air, as Tsai-yu captured. When not in flower, the plant is basically an underground tuber-like organism, attached to its host. Long used in traditional medicine to treat coughs and inflammation, the plant is currently being studied as a source of possible pharmacological compounds.

Tsai-yu (above) is now a bird watcher and bird researcher who is concerned about bird conservation, and traces their interest in nature to the summer before entering college. “Everything started there. The more I touch the wild, the more I love it,” explains Tsai-yu.

Since I am a bird watcher and a researcher, I use eBird and xeno-canto mostly. I am not quite familiar with other animals or plants, although I still like to take photos of them. iNaturalist provides a very good platform to help to solve the "unidentified" records, especially those older photos scattered on my hard disk or slides. It's really nice to know the names of the "unnamed" species I've met before. It's also very good to share species distribution records to other researchers who concerns about biodiversity conservation.

- by Tony Iwane.

- You can see Tsai-Yu’s publications here.

- Balanophora laxiflora may contain compounds that help lower uric acid levels in the blood.

- Balanophora laxiflora footage!

Now you can buy iNaturalist shirts!

For years, people have been asking for iNaturalist shirts. And for years, we've only been able to print a few here and there and distribute them in person.

We wanted a better solution. We wanted a way to easily ship iNaturalist merchandise all over the world, without turning our small office at the California Academy of Sciences into a t-shirt distribution center. We don't want to become an apparel company, we just want people to be able to show their support for iNaturalist.

We needed a solution that allowed for cost-effective international distribution, multiple currencies, and minimal overhead (especially in staff time). After much research, we hope we have a solution thanks to the wonders of modern ecommerce: print on demand drop shipping.

How it works

When you place an order, a shirt of your specified color and size is printed with the iNaturalist logo in the USA. Then it is shipped directly to you from the warehouse. We never see it or touch it. There's no inventory. You get automatic emails updating you on the status of your order. And hopefully it arrives in a timely manner!

We're launching with just t-shirts for now, but hope to add other high-demand products like hats eventually, assuming the shirts go smoothly.

The shirts are soft, 100% cotton manufactured by Bella+Canvas. There are two styles (women’s cut and men’s/unisex cut) and two print options (with the bird or without), each available in both white and black. There is a metric and imperial size chart listed for each item so you can select the correct size.

Please note that the distributor suggests the following dates as cutoff times for holiday arrival:
December 3 for shipping destinations outside the US
December 13 for shipping destinations within the US

We hope you enjoy the shirts!

When we first launched the ability for users to donate easily to iNaturalist in December 2018, some of our enthusiastic users signed up for recurring monthly donations. We’re immensely grateful for their early and ongoing support. This year, we’ve started a specific campaign to encourage automatic, monthly gifts to increase the predictability of donations throughout the year.

During the last five weeks of this year, we'll be asking for donations more than usual (we rarely ask!) since it's a time when many people are thinking about giving charitable donations. We know not everyone has the means to contribute (which is why iNaturalist is free!), but if you’re able to afford $5 (USD) per month or more, you can donate here. One-time, quarterly, or annual recurring gifts are also welcome using this form. Either way, you can give in more than 30 currencies!

Monthly Supporters can choose to add optional recognition to your user profile to help spread the word, or remain anonymous to iNaturalist users.
Here's how it looks on @bouteloua's profile.

We know thousands of members of the iNaturalist community are generous with their time in helping other users, curating taxa, and keeping iNaturalist a kind corner of the internet. We can't thank you enough for everything you do to support iNaturalist.

iNaturalist is a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. All donations are received by the California Academy of Sciences, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt not-for-profit organization based in the United States of America (Tax ID: 94-1156258).

Become a Monthly Supporter

Give once, quarterly, or annually

Other ways to give

A swimming Papuan Frogmouth bird, seen in Australia by @davidgwhite, is our Observation of the Week!

For over 22 years, David White has been a tour guide on the Daintree River in northern Queensland, Australia, and for the last 17 years he’s operated his own tour business, running a solar boat on the river. He also looks after orphan Flying Foxes as part of a wildlife rescue initiative. In over two decades on the river, David has seen a lot but he has never seen a swimming frogmouth.

“The frogmouth swimming was like everything: good timing,” David tells me. He was leading a tour with three people who were mainly interested in spotting a Little Kingfisher when 

I saw in the distance a large bird, which I thought was a Black Kite. It approached the water, flew around low, then went back to a branch. We all saw it and I said I had never seen a Black Kite fishing before, as that’s what I presumed it was doing. I was driving the boat and filming from my phone so that’s why it’s shaky. As we got closer we realised it was a Frogmouth. And certainly while I see them regularly on the river I never see them flying in the day, let alone swimming. I was amazed, absolutely amazed, and the bird was very comfortable doing [in the water].

The longest of the frogmouths, Papuan Frogmouths range from Australia’s Cape York Peninsula into the Aru Islands and New Guinea (of course). Like other members of its family, it is generally crepuscular and nocturnal, sleeping during the day and relying on its insane camouflage for protection. When hunting, the frogmouth will use its large moth to consume insects as well as small vertebrates. David showed his video to a frogmouth expert, and “she was amazed and had never seen anything like it; from the entry and the exit she said it seemed like it does this all the time. She had seen other birds swim with great difficulty.”

David heard about iNaturalist from some customers, and says he spends pretty much every day of the year out in nature, so he has plenty of opportunities to see some cool stuff (eg https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35941673). “I have many many more observations to enter,” he says. 

Unfortunately computers and technology are a little daunting to me so I do struggle with entering information. But I have to say all the people on iNaturalist have been patient with me and help me so much...I don’t have formal training and there are many people on [iNaturalist] that can help me answer questions. l also I like looking at people’s observations. I will use it if I ever go on a holiday to spot wildlife.

- by Tony Iwane. Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

- Take a gander at David’s video of the swimming frogmouth, it’s pretty awesome!

- And you can find his boat’s website here.

- Several years ago, video of a swimming Great Horned Owl went viral.

Aruba is the 151st stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. Aruba is an island affiliated with the Netherlands that is located to the north of Venezuela and west of Curaçao and Bonaire. The top 10 observers are @knightericm, @mlodinow, @grasseat, @hlormel, @jwboreal, @juddpatterson, @mduffy, @porsiel, @laurenlivo, and @arubawx.

The number of observations per month ramped up in 2018 and again in 2019.

The top 5 identifiers are @rangertreaty50, @joshuagsmith, @maractwin, @mlodinow, and @john8.

What can we do to get more people in Aruba using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below.

@knightericm @mlodinow @grasseat @hlormel @jwboreal @rangertreaty50 @joshuagsmith @maractwin @mlodinow @john8

Next stop is Rwanda!

Cook Islands is the 150th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. The Cook Islands are in the south Pacific and have political affiliations with New Zealand. The top 10 observers are @shuetrim, @pjd1, @meurkc, @d\_kluza, @luism, @anthonywood, @mtank, @aunty, @antshrike69, and @jdjohnson.

The number of observations per month is quite jagged indicating the contributions from a small number of visitors.

The top 5 identifiers are @maractwin, @phelsumas4life, @kemper, @clinton, and @sdjbrown.

What can we do to get more people in Cook Islands using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below.

@shuetrim @pjd1 @meurkc @d_kluza @luism @maractwin @phelsumas4life @kemper @clinton @sdjbrown

Next stop is Aruba!

Christmas Island is the 149th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. Christmas Island is a territory of Australia located in the Indian ocean just south of Java.. The vast majority of observations from Christmas Island are from @hix who is a diving enthusiast. The remaining 7 observers from Christmas Island are @sea-kangaroo, @budak, @johnboy, @brettvercoe, @g33k5p34k, @regineandersen, and @dpom.

The number of observations per month jumped up in 2016.

The top 5 identifiers are @maractwin, @sascha\_schulz, @markmcg, @henrick, and @kemper.

What can we do to get more people in Christmas Island using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below.

@hix @sea-kangaroo @budak @johnboy @brettvercoe @maractwin @sascha_schulz @markmcg @henrick @kemper

Next stop is Cook Islands!

Today we officially celebrate the public launch of ArgentiNat — iNaturalist Argentina as the newest member of the iNaturalist Network. ArgentiNat is a collaboration with Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina with support from the National Geographic Society.

Hoy celebramos oficialmente el lanzamiento público de ArgentiNat — iNaturalist Argentina, como nuevo miembro de la red iNaturalist. ArgentiNat es una colaboración con la Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina con apoyo de la National Geographic Society.

The name “ArgentiNat” is a portmanteau of “Argentina” and “iNaturalist”, and it’s pronounced ar-gen-TEE-nat. In Spanish, “iNaturalist” is a somewhat awkward word, because the “i” in “iNaturalist” is usually pronounced “ee”, so it sounds more like “eNaturalist”. Thus, the name ArgentiNat was born.

El nombre “ArgentiNat” es un juego de palabras entre “Argentina” e “iNat”, el nombre coloquial de iNaturalist, y se pronuncia como se escribe. Se eligió este nombre ante la dificultad de pronunciar iNaturalist como suena en inglés (la “i” se pronuncia “ai”). Por esta razón y buscando un nombre fácil de recordar nació el nombre ArgentiNat.

ArgentiNat has the distinction of being the first member of the iNaturalist Network to adopt the new iNaturalist branding style released earlier this month. Their logo is a giant anteater an iconic species and very well known in Argentina - is a symbol of conservation, as it is an endangered species, mostly found on areas which need to be protected. It is also the largest of all living xenarthrans, and as such a representative of South America. For this reason it is also the symbol of Vida Silvestre.

ArgentiNat tiene la distinción de ser el primer miembro de la red iNaturalist en adoptar el nuevo estilo de marca lanzado a comienzos de este mes. El logo es un oso hormiguero gigante, una especie icónica y muy conocida en Argentina: es un símbolo de la conservación al tratarse de una especie amenazada que se encuentra en áreas que dependen de la protección. Es además el mayor de los xenartros que viven en el presente, y como tal un representante de América del Sur, continente donde se originó este grupo de mamíferos. Por la misma razón también es el símbolo de Vida Silvestre.

Just last week, Argentina passed 100,000 verifiable observations, which ranks it 23rd globally in terms of iNaturalist activity. You can read more about activity trends in Argentina in the iNaturalist World Tour post from July 16. @roget, who co-authored the World Tour post, is the primary point of contact for ArgentiNat in his role with Vida Silvestre.

La semana pasada, Argentina alcanzó las 100.000 observaciones verificables, lo que posiciona al país en el puesto 23 en términos de actividad en iNaturalist. Se puede leer más sobre las tendencias de actividad en la publicación de la Gira Mundial de iNaturalist del 16 de julio. @roget, quien es el co-autor de esa publicación, es el principal punto de contacto para ArgentiNat a través de su rol en Vida Silvestre.

The iNaturalist Network now has nine nationally-focused sites that are fully connected and interoperable with the global iNaturalist site. The sites are: NaturaLista Mexico, iNaturalist NZ — Mātaki Taiao (formerly NatureWatch NZ), iNaturalist Canada, Naturalista Colombia, Biodiversity4All (Portugal), iNaturalist Panamá, iNaturalist Ecuador, iNaturalist Australia and now ArgentiNat. Any iNaturalist user can log in on any of the sites using their same credentials and will see the same notifications.

La red iNaturalist ahora tiene nueve sitios con foco nacional que están completamente conectados y son interoperables con el sitio global de iNaturalist. Estos sitios son: Naturalista Mexico, iNaturalist Canada, iNaturalist New Zealand (anteriormente NatureWatchNZ), Naturalista Colombia, BioDiversity4All (Portugal), iNaturalist Panama, iNaturalist Ecuador, iNaturalist Australia, y ahora ArgentiNat. Cualquier usuario de iNaturalist puede iniciar sesión en cualquiera de estos sitios usando las mismas credenciales y verá las mismas notificaciones.

The iNaturalist Network model allows for localizing the iNaturalist experience to better support communities on a national scale and local leadership in the movement, without splitting the community into isolated, national sites. The iNaturalist team is grateful to the outreach, training, translations, and user support carried out through the efforts of the iNaturalist Network member institutions.

El modelo de la red iNaturalist permite localizar la experiencia de iNaturalist para apoyar mejor a las comunidades a nivel nacional y un liderazgo mejor en el movimiento, sin dividir a la comunidad en sitios nacionales aislados. El equipo de iNaturalist agradece el alcance, las capacitaciones, las traducciones y el apoyo a los usuarios que se llevan a cabo con esfuerzo de las instituciones miembro de la red iNaturalist.

We look forward to welcoming many new Argentinian members of the iNaturalist community and watching how participation grows during the southern hemisphere spring and summer!

Esperamos dar la bienvenida a muchos nuevos miembros de Argentina en la comunidad de iNaturalist y ver cómo la participación aumenta durante la primavera y el verano del hemisferio sur.