The Surprising Power of Your Nature Photos | Scott Loarie | TED

I want to share what's possible when we notice nature. Let's start with this picture of a New Zealand moth from about a century ago. It's got this fantastic name. It's called the Frosted Phoenix. It's also been called the Holy Grail of New Zealand moths, and it's been missing for about a century and scientists thought that it was extinct. And then about a year ago, the Frosted Phoenix rose again. This picture was noticed by scientists on a citizen science project that I help lead. But the photographer wasn't a scientist. He was a Swedish birdwatcher. He's a schoolteacher. He likes birds, and he was down in New Zealand to look for kiwi birds. So kiwi are these amazing little nocturnal birds that walk around on beaches. You have to go out at night to see them. So he goes kiwi birds. He's actually walking back to his hotel. So he’s walking up the stairs, and he notices this moth on his hotel balcony. So he takes a photo of it and posts it and goes to bed, not realizing that he just helped solve a century-old science mystery. So this is why this is important. I mean, the Frosted Phoenix isn't alone. It's one of over two million species like these that we share the planet with. There's probably many more. It's probably more like 10 million, alright? With so many species, it's no wonder that the Frosted Phoenix just fell off the radar. I mean, we don't have enough scientists. professionals to keep track of all of these, let alone manage them or protect them. And the problem is, these species are really important. They form the foundations of our life-support systems. And we're losing them. We're losing them faster and faster. In fact, scientists think that with habitat destruction and climate change, we're going to lose a third, that's one in three, by the end of this century. That's a really big problem. That's the extinction crisis. But this just isn't an extinction crisis. It's also an attention crisis. I mean, we're more disconnected from the natural world than ever before. You know, if we're not noticing these species, what's happening to them, that means we don't care about them. And if we don't care, then why would we protect them? But here's the good news. We can keep track of, manage and protect all of these species by engaging millions of everyday, regular people. And through this participation, we can get people to start caring about nature again. We can start repairing this connection with the natural world. That's the power of citizen science. So I've seen this firsthand with the citizen science project that I lead, which is called iNaturalist. So how does it work? So you go outside, you take a picture of any living thing. And first the AI will identify it, but then you share it. You share it with a global community of scientists and naturalists, and they'll help vet it and turn it into scientific data. So this is data that's used by scientists to track species, to understand how ecosystems are changing, and even to describe new kinds of plants and animals. So iNaturalist started as a master's project at UC Berkeley and over the last 15 years, I've helped it grow into one of the world's largest citizen science projects. So we now have millions of people around the world who are doing this, posting their photos, and this community has built this really amazing, living, breathing atlas of the natural world. We now have hundreds of millions of observations, representing one in four of all species on the planet. And these are -- (Applause) These are data that are used by AI models, by land managers and by scientists in thousands of studies. But remember, each one of these observations is an encounter between a regular, everyday person and the natural world. And some of them are really great. This is Glenda Walter. She's a retiree in Australia, and she was out on a walk, and she noticed this little mantis. She took a picture of it. It's an entirely new species of praying mantis. So it was given the name Inimia nat, which abbreviates to I. nat, iNat is the nickname for iNaturalist, in honor of this kind of collaboration between regular, everyday people and scientists. We've seen hundreds of discoveries like this. So this is Abigail Del Pozo. She's a student in Ecuador, and she was actually on a class field trip, and she noticed this butterfly, posted a picture of it. It's a completely new species of butterfly. Just this February, Deb Manley was in Big Bend National Park in Texas. And she was on a hike, and she saw this little flower that she didn't recognize. So she took a photo of it. And again, it's a completely new species of plant, and that's inside of a national park, inside of the United States. And even in super well-studied groups like birds. So this is Tom Vierus, and he's a filmmaker. So he was in Papua New Guinea on a scouting trip. He saw this hawk up in the tree, so he takes a photograph of it. And these are the first-ever photographs of this bird. It hasn't been seen for 55 years. But this is my favorite story. This is Juan De Roux, he's a Colombian architect. And he was in this really remote cabin in the Andes, and all of a sudden this weasel jumps into the cabin.

You know, it's running around inside the bathroom, knocking things over. So he grabs his camera, and he takes these pictures. These are the only known photographs of the elusive Colombian weasel. (Laughter) (Applause) So this is an animal that, the day before, was only known from skins inside of museums. And then this discovery gins up a bunch of attention on, you know, the media. And then we get #ToiletWeasel trending on social media. It's like science colliding with the natural world, you know, the modern world. But when you put all this together, we're getting, for the first time, a real-time look at how ecosystems are changing on a global scale. In California, the Department of Fish and Wildlife are using these data to build a marine health early warning system to see how climate change is impacting marine protected areas up and down the coast. And this is all powered by regular people, not professional scientists. I mean, so many people think that science isn't for them, "I can't be a scientist, I don't have a degree. I'm not an expert. " But science isn't just for scientists, everybody can participate. But here's what interests me. Is that taking photographs, noticing starfish and plants, it doesn't just change what we know about the natural world. It changes us. Because each one of these photographs and observations is this very personal act of curiosity and action and participation. It changes our relationship with nature. It doesn't just help science, it helps us care about the nature that's in our lives. And I think that's the most important tool for conservation of all of this. In the early days of iNaturalist, I'm a scientist, so I was just really focused on scaling data, and I was thinking, if we can get more people involved, data, that's what we need. But what I didn't realize is when these communities, you know, they're what's driving this. And when they reach a certain scale, really interesting things start to happen. We're seeing people use iNaturalist in ways that we never imagined. We're seeing people use it to organize. Like this is a BioBlitz. So a BioBlitz is a community-led nature inventory where people come together in real life to inventory nature. This one was organized by the Young Biologists Association in Sri Lanka. But I mean, these are the kind of engines for grassroots capacity building that we need to end the extinction crisis. And when people see that they're doing something that's bigger than themselves, you know, that's part of a global effort, that's when we believe that our actions really can make a difference. So this is the City Nature challenge. It started out as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco saying, hey, let's hold BioBlitzes on the same day in April. And then totally organically, it's grown into this annual event where thousands of groups across hundreds of cities all conduct simultaneous BioBlitzes. It's now the largest annual census of life on Earth. But it's more than that. I mean, to me, this is a celebration that our actions really can make a difference. You know, it's "think globally, act locally" in action. Because at this local scale, there really is this connection between noticing to actually stewarding and improving habitat. This is Heather Holm. She was leading efforts to monitor pollinators, so that’s bees and butterflies, in Minnesota. And she started noticing that these rusty patched bumblebees were declining. So she rallied her community to do something about it. So they are coming out to actually restore the habitats that the bees depend on. So that's pulling out invasive buckthorn, planting wildflowers, attracting the bees. So it's going from noticing to actually stewarding and protecting. In California, Sally Gale, she couldn't bear noticing all these newts and frogs that were getting hit by cars as they crossed the roads to breed. So she rallied her community as amphibian crossing guards. (Laughter) They go out on rainy nights, and they shepherd newts and frogs across the roads. They're literally saving these newts and frogs one bucket at a time. And then they use these data to design and build underpasses to help amphibians cross safely. I mean, Sally didn't wait for someone else to fix this. These kinds of solutions, they don't have to wait for our governments to wake up. Anybody can start these things, kick these off. I call this actionable hope. You know, we live in this age of just overwhelming environmental crisis, and it's so easy to just throw up your hands and say, there's nothing we can do about this. But this is a path forward. You know, not through passive despair, but through active participation. You know, our goal by 2030 is to try to get 100 million people connected to nature. You know, to census most of the world's species and to inspire and network a million grassroots projects like these to restore habitats for tens of thousands of species. The extinction crisis is too big for any one of us to solve alone. But if we all do our small part, we can solve this.

So this is what I want you to do. The next time you're outside, just take a minute to realize that you're part of an ecosystem that we still know so little about, and that needs your help. And then just notice something, like, maybe it's a moth on your balcony. Maybe it’s like a fern growing through a crack in the sidewalk. And then take a photograph of it and share it. Share it with science. I mean, be a part of this responsibility we have to understand and protect the natural world, because solving the extinction crisis isn't just for scientists, it’s this shared human project. It's one you absolutely can contribute to. And it just starts with noticing nature. Thank you. (Applause) Chris Anderson: Thank you. So great to have you here. Give me your sense of your emotional landscape. You've seen, you know more than most people about what we're losing. You've seen all these inspiring on-the-ground stories. How many days do you wake up sick to your stomach with despair? And how many days hopeful? And how do you manage that roller coaster? Scott Loarie: It's really tough. And I think that's one of the things that is hard when you're an environmentalist, is all these challenges are these hockey stick curves, right. It's like CO2, extinction, everything’s going up, and it's hard to find solutions that have the potential to do that. And that's what I think is so inspiring about the TED community, is we sort of still have this solving problems, but we're actually embracing new ideas, new thinking that can do that. And that’s what keeps me going. Because if we’re just watching the world burn, it's really hard to get out of bed. CA: Thank you for your inspiration, that was phenomenal.