iNaturalist

Use the iNaturalist app when you visit Burnaby Lake Regional Park to discover and connect with nature.

What is iNaturalist?

  • It is one of the world’s most popular nature apps
  • It helps you identify the plants and animals around you.
  • It connects you to a community of over a million citizen scientists and naturalists who can help you learn more about nature!
  • By recording and sharing your observations, you’ll create research quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature.

Two easy steps to participate:

1. Go to iNaturalist.ca or download the iNaturalist app on your device and set up your account on your device or computer. This will show your observations and you can be notified if someone helps you ID something. 

iPhone app in the Apple App Store

2. Take photos outdoors and upload them to iNaturalist. You can always observe, even without cell reception or wifi.

Android app on Google Play

Pay attention to plants and wildlife you haven’t noticed before. Then simply snap photos of what you discover and share your photos on iNaturalist.

iNaturalist is a great way to build your nature knowledge and get feedback on your observations. What’s more, you’ll be joining a global community of citizen scientists and contributing to biodiversity science.
It’s a fun outdoor activity for everyone, on your own or with your family and friends.

Please take photos safely. Don’t approach wildlife, stay on trails, and don’t pick or remove anything.

You can also check out these tutorials on how iNaturalist works:

From the iNaturalist phone app: How to make an observation on iNaturalist

From the iNaturalist website: How to use iNaturalist’s Photo and Sound uploader

Tips & Tricks

  • Remember to turn on the GPS location function for your camera or mobile device so coordinates can be embedded into your photo
  • While you can use the app in the park, it can take time (depending on connections) and data
  • We actually recommend you take as many photo observations as you can while in the park and when you get home, upload them via your computer.
  • Either download your photos onto your computer or upload from your mobile device (like an external drive).
  • Use iNaturalist.ca, the Canadian portal of iNaturalist (administered by the Canadian Wildlife Federation).  It has two advantages:
    1. It contains news of Canadian events, such as bioblitzes
    2. Canadian Conservation Data Centres, run by all provinces and territories, can more easily get data on select species whose locations have been automatically obscured by iNat, because they are considered to be potentially at risk of persecution or poaching.  Like rattlesnakes (persecution) or certain orchids (collecting).  The government-run Conservation Data Centres are used to dealing with such sensitive species, and they need their locations in their databases in case developers or other agencies want to do something that could accidentally harm them.  When they are consulted, they can say “there’s a rare orchid there, best not pave them over”.

Photography Guides from iNaturalist

Link to other iNaturalist resources.

BC Parks Foundation photo guide