Welcome, iNaturalist United Kingdom!

iNaturalist United Kingdom is the newest member of the iNaturalist Network! iNaturalistUK is a collaboration led by the National Biodiversity Network Trust (NBN Trust) with the Marine Biological Association (MBA) and the Biological Records Centre (BRC).

The MBA is excited to utilise the iNaturalist platform to increase engagement in the marine environment and to build a community of recorders to improve our knowledge of the rich and varied marine life that is found in UK waters.

Working with MBA and BRC, the NBN Trust will be developing ways of promoting and using iNaturalist in the UK to complement the other recording tools already available to the biological recording community. These include iRecord and iSpot as well as many other platforms that are popular in the UK.

Users in the United Kingdom are encouraged to affiliate their account iNaturalistUK to allow partner organisations enhanced access to UK sightings. This won't affect existing arrangements with how your sightings are currently shared to GBIF or available to the international community.
BRC will work with National Recording Schemes to facilitate the integration of iNaturalist within UK recording systems. MBA will be building on its extensive experience in coastal BioBlitz events to increase the wildlife records openly available.

iNaturalist is a growing community within the UK. The NBN Trust with its network of members is well placed to engage with these citizen scientists and encourage greater participation in wildlife recording, particularly for groups with little previous experience.

The iNaturalist community in the United Kingdom has been growing steadily over the past few years. From around 10,000 observers in early 2019 there are now more than 55,500 observers who have recorded 15,000 species in the UK. The growth of the City Nature Challenge event in the UK has encouraged its popularity.

We look forward to watching the iNaturalist community in the UK continue to grow in its reach and impact with the support of the NBN Trust, Marine Biological Association, and Biological Records Centre.

About the iNaturalist Network

The iNaturalist Network now has fifteen nationally-focused sites that are fully connected and interoperable with the global iNaturalist site. The sites are: Naturalista Mexico, iNaturalist Canada, iNaturalist New Zealand (formerly NatureWatchNZ), Naturalista Colombia, BioDiversity4All (Portugal), iNaturalist Panama, iNaturalist Ecuador, iNaturalist Australia, ArgentiNat (Argentina), iNaturalist Israel, iNaturalist Finland, iNaturalist Chile, iNaturalist Greece, iNaturalist Luxembourg, and now iNaturalist United Kingdom. Any iNaturalist user can log in on any of the sites using their same username and password and will see the same notifications. All data from all network sites are still shared globally and fully accessible from each site using search filters.

The iNaturalist Network model allows for localizing the iNaturalist experience to better support communities and local leadership on a national scale, 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.

Posted on April 6, 2021 02:50 AM by carrieseltzer