Join the growing Park Pollinators community and get the most out of your national park visit! Serve as a citizen scientist and spend some time identifying the amazing pollinators that inhabit our National Parks.
Pollinators are the backbone of all global food systems. Without them, these systems will collapse. Because of their seasonal dependence, pollinators also act as a prime indicator species for changing climates. Pollinators have traditionally been studied from an agricultural perspective, but are native plant pollinators also in danger?
Over the next five years, Park Pollinators’ goal is to inventory pollinators across all the nation’s National Parks. Each park has a different landscape, and thus, a different story to tell about the nature of its pollinator diversity. These are stories of the utmost importance, but we need your support to help tell them
This is the question Park Pollinators has set out to answer, but we need your help to do it. This is critically important research. Many forces are posing significant threats to pollinators, chief among them climate change. Our goal is to use this research to both educate and engage the public about the importance of preserving public lands for future pollinator communities.
Our research focuses on building National Park pollinator inventories. As a Park Pollinator, you’d join a nationwide team of amateur pollinator scientists photographing and identifying pollinators across the entire National Park system. Basically, you snap pictures of cool insects and gorgeous plants! You then upload them to our iNaturalist catalog, where you can also connect with other citizen scientists. By getting a baseline reading of the pollinators in our national parks, we’ll then be able to devise plans to help protect and preserve them.
Contributing is as easy as uploading your pictures to the iNaturalist database! Interested in getting even more involved? Join our Hotshots crew and start contributing today!
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