24
terrain March/April 2021
ENSURING BIODIVERSITY
Growing nature connections, protections, and discovery.
By Jean Ponzi
B
iodiversity is one of life's biggest ideas - and the most challenging focus I've taken up in my 30-plus years of enviro-advocacy. Amid the mass of our own species' pressing concerns, how to get people to care about, to understand the wild complexity of all life on Earth? Since 2012, around our bi-state area, a diverse human network has been doing just this. BiodiverseCity St. Louis (BDV-STL) is a community- wide initiative, powered by a coalition of over 100 partners, to promote, protect, and plan for biodiversity at home, at school, at work, and throughout the greater St. Louis eco-region. Missouri Botanical Garden serves as organizing hub of this great wheel of collaborative action. The BDV-STL Leadership Team currently includes professionals from the Saint Louis Zoo, Great Rivers Greenway, Open Space Council, Forest ReLEAF of Missouri, Missouri Department of Conservation, and East- West Gateway Council of Governments' OneSTL, our regional sustainability plan, along with Garden staff. OneSTL convened a summit in 2017 to set implementation targets in six focus areas of this plan. Leaders of BDV-STL stepped up to include biodiversity alongside more familiar public enviro-concerns like recycling and energy. The resulting target - called BiomeSTL, short for Biodiversity of Metro St. Louis - includes an under- construction atlas of online nature data intended for use by planners and land-use decision makers region-wide. We can manage what we measure, whether kilowatts or trees. Data is essential to rally evaluation of nature's needs as well as our own. Two community actions coming this spring invite people of all ages, abilities, and interests to contribute to this movement while enjoying nature.
City Nature Challenge
From April 30 to May 3 this year, adults and youth with smartphones will explore and document biodiversity, doing science in cities worldwide. Our fun and useful tool? The mobile app iNaturalist, which identifies plants and animals from the photos and audio/ visual files you upload. City Nature Challenge was launched in 2016 by Bay area- based California Academy of Sciences, developer of iNaturalist, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. These two science giants engaged their communities in a friendly contest so successful it went global by 2018, when our St. Louis Metro Area joined. COVID-19 restrictions changed 2020's competition format to a science celebration that 244 cities enjoyed and will repeat. City Nature Challenge expands on the process of a BioBlitz, with "ordinary people" taking the lead, sighting critters and plants in parks, neighborhood spaces, on workplace and school grounds, and in our own yards. Species will be identified by iNaturalist, often with some ecological context. Scientists in multiple disciplines weigh in toward Research Grade observations when the app detects a species that is rare, threatened, endangered, invasive, or otherwise biologically significant. Inspired by City Nature Challenge, BDV-STL gets additional benefit from the
nature
TOP
: Biodiversity supports a healthy planet.
ABOVE
: The iNaturalist app identifies plants and animals.
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