Papua New Guinea - iNaturalist World Tour
We're in Papua New Guinea for the 125th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. First, apologies for the abbreviated World Tour post today and likely the next few days as we deal with power outages and evacuations in Northern California. Papua New Guinea comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea. The top 10 observers are @shelley_b, @markuslilje, @jim-anderson, @sonnyjimbo, @tonydiver, @tomdriscoll, @coenobita, @thierrycordenos, @bushmonkey140, and @djringer.
Observations have ramped up in the last two years peaking in September of this month.
The top 5 identifiers are @rfoster, @joshuagsmith, @maractwin, @kemper, and @pihlaviita
What can we do to get more people in Papua New Guinea using iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below.
@shelley_b @markuslilje @jim-anderson @sonnyjimbo @tonydiver @rfoster @joshuagsmith @maractwin @kemper @pihlaviita
We’ll be back tomorrow in the Maldives!
Comments
New Guinea is a very species rich, tropical island but doesn't appear to have relatively much tourism or tourist infrastructure for us foreigners to flock there with our cameras and make recordings.
True. I’d love to go but it’s also very hard to reach from less connected countries like Egypt. I think any activity needs to come from local enthusiasts
Yes, Papua New Guinea is not currently the ideal tourist destination--at least for those without local contacts--though it definitely could be made into a fabulous locale for ecotourists. I don’t really think there’s a capacity for high local involvement on the site yet, either. The answer is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users At least as of 2017, only 11.21% of the population had accessed the internet from any device within the previous 12 months, a very low number even by global standards. I suspect many of even that small percentage just use internet cafes on rare occasions or have access only in a work context, and that others budget their very expensive data quite carefully, with none for non-essential uses.
In my opinion, the best approach for now is to encourage the use of iNat among affluent city dwellers, university teachers and students, and expats. That way, hopefully there will be enough local species documented on the site that when internet access and data prices improve, and the number of internet users increases dramatically, iNat will be a more useful tool to them than it would be now.
I should note that Papua New Guinea has the second-lowest percentage of internet users out of all World Tour countries visited thus far (after Madagascar), although it’s a little better in absolute numbers, since its population is higher than many of the tiny countries. By the way, the stats here may help with understanding other countries’ low iNat use, too.
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