Amateur effort fuels real science

Dr. Rebecca Johnson is a biologist at the California Academy of Sciences (Cal Academy), where she directs the Thriving California initiative and the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science. In this interview with Newsjunkie staff reporter Morgan Kriesel, Johnson discusses Cal Academy’s work with amateur scientists, the findings and resources it has produced, and the relationship between public trust in museums and valuable community science.

“We've been doing a form of community science for 170 years…”

So how long have you guys been using community science in your research?

The Academy itself, as a natural history museum that was founded in 1853, has always been a place for amateurs to share their expertise and their knowledge. Natural history museums were founded by people who were not [professional scientists], but who wanted to understand the natural world. So there's a very long tradition of people working together to understand and document nature, that natural history museums have been a really important part of.

We've been doing a form of community science for 170 years [at Cal Academy], but we made a concerted shift in about 2010 to focus on the kind of work we're doing now. I was lucky enough to be a part of that change, along with my former colleague, Allison Young.

We were able to create a program, the program that we have now, focused on engaging people in California in making and sharing biodiversity observations, and then using those observations to do good science and to develop tools that would be useful for policy makers and decision makers—whether they were local community-based decision makers or governmental, regional, or statewide organizations or agencies. We have been doing that work now for many years. And our strategy has been a mix of working closely locally with partners, and also running these bigger, distributed campaigns where we're not the people doing the local work, but we're working with partners who work with their communities.

From the beginning of our projects, except for some small exceptions, we've used iNaturalist as a platform to gather the data that we were using. So we've partnered with and relied on iNaturalist.

Was this in reaction to a policy? Was it that you needed to engage people? What was the spark?

The spark really was—we knew that, when we were founded, we documented all of the diversity of California in the form of collections, right? Herbarium collections, specimens. We have this understanding of the historic distribution of plants and animals throughout California through our collections. And we knew that things are changing.

A lot of things have changed. And we had this opportunity with cell phone technology, with iNaturalist, where we could engage community members and people all over the state of California in taking pictures of the plants and animals that they see, and we could create a new understanding of the distribution of plants and animals to compare to the past, and to understand how things have changed.

So it was a climate change kind of thing?

It was a climate change kind of thing. We knew as scientists that we had seen many things change. Everyone had anecdotes about change. It was driven partly by wanting to understand past change, and also to create a new baseline with which to measure future change. If we can understand where things are now, we [can see] things are changing, and that change is becoming more rapid. Can we create an understanding of what's where now, so we can compare to that in the future? And we knew that there was a really great way to engage people everywhere in doing that.

It would allow us to help people strengthen, or create a new connection to nature. But it also would allow us to collect data in more places, throughout the state and now the world. You can't make natural history museum collections of everything, and you don't need to, but you can have people take pictures all over, wherever they are.

So if I understand correctly, it's like you had a snapshot of California throughout different times in history. Now you're making a new one, and [you have] the technology to include more people. So you have the opportunity to create a more full snapshot than before.

It's a different type of data, and it is a different kind of snapshot. It tells us a lot about the distribution of plants and animals throughout our state and beyond.

The other thing that we really wanted to focus on is that there's nature everywhere, and so people can take pictures everywhere. You don't have to go far away to find nature. We really wanted to emphasize that nature is where you are—in your backyard, as you're walking to work, on a city street. Helping people to notice nature around them, and to focus on urban nature where people are, was another focus of our work.

“…these people, who might not ever meet or see each other, are working together—collectively making the most important biodiversity dataset we have…”

Is there debate about data quality when it comes to community scientists?

There was pushback about data quality around data collected by people who aren't scientists. I think there are different ways to gather data with people, and the way we do our work is we use an app and a platform called iNaturalist that requires evidence.

You're taking a picture or using a sound, so there's evidence of what you've seen. I've seen push-back even to that kind of data, but there is evidence. If someone disagrees that you saw a California scrub jay, you labeled it incorrectly, then they can look at the picture and they can change it. So it's not like I [wrote down] a list of birds and I showed it to you, and I'm saying, "Trust me, I swear I saw those birds."

And that's the thing about iNaturalist data—there's evidence and the identifications are dynamic, and the community works to improve the identifications. So the identifications are also part of that community conversation, not just the sharing of the data. And as you're learning how to identify, you're becoming a better community scientist, you're spreading that knowledge along the group.

So I think the trust issue has—it's a little easier to dispel, and to show people that there's evidence behind all of the data that we're using. Doesn't mean they're perfect. You should always curate any data that you use. But as the experts who might be using those data, you have the power to help curate those data and make them better for everyone.

When we first started using iNaturalist, you took a picture, you made a best guess of what you saw. you made your hypothesis "This is what I saw," and then the community would help improve that identification. Now on iNaturalist, there's a machine learning algorithm that makes suggestions of what you saw. So most people start with a machine learning suggestion that's based on iNaturalist images, and your location. But then the community of real people still has to approve, or discuss, or verify that identification.

Is it you guys who are verifying it, or is that open to anybody?

It's the whole community. It's open to anyone. So within the iNaturalist platform, there's not a preference given to someone who has “PhD” behind their name. Anyone can make identifications, and generally, the community of identifiers is extremely knowledgeable and very dedicated to identifying, and they do a pretty fabulous job of identifying.

And it's crowdsourced, right? So if there's a disagreement that arises, and people discuss it, identifications can change.

Yeah, people love those sorts of puzzles that they can do together. It reminds me of a Reddit community, or something like that. So I could see the passion—why people would care about really getting it right.

But you were saying that there's still some pushback on the use of iNaturalist. Is that why scientists push back, because anybody can verify?

It would maybe not surprise you that some scientists are like, "Why should anyone get to identify? I'm the expert, I should identify."

As a scientist who uses those data, before I use them, I would go through and try to identify things, and make sure that they're consistent, and flag any problems that I would see (especially in specific instances, for very specific data). Any scientist who would wanna use those data can do that, because it's open to everyone.

One of the things that can be hard is you might have a specific expertise, and then people might disagree with you online. I've had colleagues who are like, "I described that species. I know that this is what it is," and someone's arguing with them. You can't stop them because it is a community, right? It is an online community. You can't say "No, this is the final say," and so that can be a little bit frustrating.

Overall, there are hundreds of millions of observations that have been made and shared. And the value of those observations for science—it’s the combination of the people who have made those observations, who are all over the world, and the people that have identified them. It's amazing that these people, who might not ever meet or see each other, are working together—collectively making the most important biodiversity dataset we have (of current biodiversity).

Why is it the most important?

It's the biggest.

Okay so, I'm a natural history museum scientist, so I love natural history museum collection data, and they're critically important. But, iNaturalist—millions and millions of observations from all over the world are made on iNaturalist every year. There's no way that natural history museums are making that many collections every year. So it's important because it's this current, dynamic dataset of where plants and animals are found all over the world.

Is iNaturalist data cited a lot? Is it considered good?

It's so interesting. I had a conversation with my father-in-law about this. He was like, “People don't use iNat data for research." And I was like, "Oh no, they do."

I think it's hard to tell. I was reading a paper that was saying how many papers were using iNaturalist data in 2022, but it's thousands of papers, and they're not all cited. Some people cite it using the way they found it, and then other people—it's not always cited directly that it's from iNaturalist. But yeah, thousands of papers use these data as their data source.

How do they cite it if they don't say it's from iNaturalist?

It's a little bit confusing. You can download any data from iNaturalist—like, anyone can download any data from iNaturalist and use those.

So some people might say in their citation if they downloaded their data directly from iNaturalist, they might just say "I got these data from iNaturalist," and list how they got them. It's a lot harder for iNaturalist to track that.

But then there's another way to download iNaturalist data through what's called the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. GBIF is the acronym. GBIF is the place where biodiversity data from natural history museums and from iNaturalist and eBird and other places are all aggregated. If you want iNaturalist research-grade data, go to GBIF. If you download them from there as a data set, it gets a DOI, and then it's like a citation, so it's much easier for all of us to track what's been published. Those are the ones we know for sure. I have this stat here that, in 2022, 1400 articles used iNat data. And that was just from the GBIF download, so the number is likely low.

If you downloaded it from a different source, whether it's iNaturalist, or you can download some data from Amazon Web Services, it's harder to track. I think it's only increased and that number is much higher.

Do you think there are more people participating in community science as well?

I definitely think it's growing. More and more people are participating in sharing information that they have gathered for the benefit of understanding something, for the benefit of science. There are many different platforms and places for people to do that.

I really focus on nature-based citizen and community science, but there are all kinds of other projects, like about air quality or about water quality, about snow or rain, about space and helping analyze photos from space. So there are many different ways that people are involved in contributing toward science.

As people have a tiny little computer in their pockets all the time, it allows more people across different areas to be involved and to share what they're seeing, or what they're hearing, and to include the evidence.

“…we've been able to… [use] community-collected data to forecast future change…”

Tell me about the first project you guys started, how it came together.

I'm a marine invertebrate zoologist, and a marine biologist, and so one of our projects was a coastal project we started at a local beach, a local tide pool, maybe about 45 minutes south of San Francisco.

We worked with volunteers to document the biodiversity there. That project has now grown to a statewide campaign. It started out in just one place, working with volunteers, very local, very place-based. We were collecting data with iNaturalist. We were also collecting data on data sheets. We had a separate project where we were counting things, because we were out there so much with volunteers. When we would see changes, the volunteers would be attuned to those changes because they knew the place so well.

Back in about 2014, we had this big El Niño, or warm water event off the coast of California, and it led to changes on our coast. We were able to see those changes locally with our volunteers, but we knew they were happening everywhere up and down the state. And so we took that knowledge, and what we were experiencing, and we created a campaign called Snapshot Cal Coast, where we worked with partners up and down the state to get their communities out, making and sharing observations during the lowest low tides of the summer.

And now we just had our 11th year of that program. So we've been able to collect data, to understand the distribution of plants, animals, seaweeds, and coastal things, and how that's changing. We have this dataset where we can actually see the change through time, and we've been able to build an early warning and forecasting system [called the Dynamic Observatory of Biodiversity] that uses community-collected data to forecast future change we might expect under a changing climate.

That's what started as this very small thing, and now it's become this pretty large thing. And the core of that project is—we don't work with people directly everywhere, but we work with partners who get their community out to take pictures in the tide pools. We send them stickers, and postcards, and posters, but I'm not going out in the field with people in San Diego. I'm going out in the field with people here, and we travel a little bit. But we really work with partners to engage their folks in the places that they're most connected to.

Who are these partners? What kind of organizations?

All kinds of different organizations. Some of this work was funded by the California Ocean Protection Council, the state organization that's responsible for protecting our coast. So they're partners. Obviously, they gave us funding, and we built some of these tools together.

But we partner with hundreds of organizations: California state parks, universities, nonprofits, tribes, marine labs. We'll take everyone. Anyone who's on the coast that has a connection to nature, or connects people to nature, we'll work with you, and send you materials, and help you get your folks out along the coast.

What were you finding with the changes in the tide pools? And the early warning forecast system—what is it warning?

So we have seen, of course, many changes, and this year was really interesting because we're in the start of another El Niño. We've definitely seen some ranges shifting northward. There have been a couple papers about rain shifts due to the warm water blob, many of which rely on iNaturalist data as the evidence for those rain shifts we've seen.

One of the reasons we started this program was there were some really big changes that I was describing. There was something called sea star wasting disease that killed 95% of the sea stars, or starfish, off the California coast in about 2014. Many of the species have recovered, and we've been able to track and see that recovery. But there are some species who have not recovered, and we have been tracking some of that. We started another mini campaign called the Solstice Sea Star Search, where people look for starfish in June and December (around the solstices), especially this one star, this really big, beautiful sunflower star that was really hard hit by the sea star wasting.

We've been able to engage people directly with the early warning and forecasting system that takes the data that we've collected, along with models of future climate, and it projects where it thinks you'll be more likely to see these species. It goes through hundreds of species. It can also predict and tell you the drivers of change, and some of those drivers are temperature, and salinity, and pH, but also photosynthesis—how much things will photosynthesize and how that might change under a changing climate is another big predictor. It's really just an incredible tool to be able to look at species that you might care about. And so for some of our management partners who are managing these species, they can look at species that they might care about and look at the projected changes.

I study sea slugs, [specifically] nudibranchs. That's my expertise, and they're very good indicators of short-term change. They have a planktonic larval form and they can move really quickly as things change. They have very specific food sources. They're a really good indicator and you can use them to understand change. For me, it's like—you can spend hours looking at this tool, looking at how things might change. And it's very cool to know that all that data is collected by individual people, who are out there making observations.

“There is a whole other world where, when communities have a problem, they work toward developing the science...”

We talked about the possible drawbacks, but what are the benefits of having community stakeholders participate in this kind of data gathering?

I think there are so many.

Even if someone is out in nature, and walking to their car wherever they are, and sees a butterfly, and takes a picture, there's so many different parts of that experience that are super cool, right? You notice something, take a picture, share it on iNaturalist. You learn what it is because the machine algorithm makes a suggestion, then other people improve that identification, verify that identification. So now you're part of a community, talking about this butterfly that you saw on your walk home.

For me, and the people that we work with, there's this cool thing where now you're like, "Oh, maybe when I see that butterfly another time, I'm gonna remember it, and I'm gonna wonder what the next butterfly is." And so then you're paying attention to nature, to timing, to phenology, when you might see butterflies, where you might see butterflies—that's connecting and understanding nature just from one experience. And the millions of people doing that same thing are contributing to this dataset that's helping us answer questions about biodiversity—how it's changing, and things that you couldn't even imagine.

There's so many examples, but one of my favorites is these people who took pictures of mountain goats. Someone's like, "Oh my gosh, this is so cool. I just saw this mountain goat!" And researchers are like, "Oh my gosh, we can use the pictures to understand changing molting patterns [due to] climate change," because you can see the molt in the picture, and then you can look at all those observations through time and see how molting timing is changing. And so the one person who's like, "Oh my God, there's a mountain goat," you're not thinking your data is gonna be used to understand something like that, but it is.

And that's one tiny example, and there are hundreds of thousands of those examples. It could be that you took a picture of some insect that hasn't been seen in the park in 60 years (that happens all the time), or you took a picture of a species that hasn't been described by Western science (that happens, too).

So it's like, the breadth and amount of the information allows for more questions than the original one to be answered.

It's a combination of the value of one observation, the value to you as a person who took that picture, then the connection—all of it together, it’s a whole other kind of value.

One of the reasons I was excited to talk to you is [Cal Academy’s] definition of community science. Can you go into that a little bit? Why is it important to distinguish “community science” from “citizen science?”

Thanks for asking. This terminology in the participatory science world has been [the subject of] a long, ongoing debate within the community. I won't try to summarize the whole debate here, but I'll tell you that our work is really about engaging people everywhere to connect to nature, and to document the plants, and animals, and other living things that they see.

In about 2010, we started the work here at the Academy that we called “citizen science,” and this was the prevalent term in the 2010s. I gave a lot of talks about citizen science and engaging people, and people used to say, "When we say ‘citizen,’ we mean citizen of the world, not a citizen that requires papers or a passport." But I found I was spending a lot of time defending this term that I didn't feel that strongly about. At the time, being a citizen, especially in the United States, especially in California, became a really hot button issue. Some people who were undocumented, or did not have citizenship in the United States felt excluded from participating just by the term.

We had some colleagues, at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, who did community listening and learned [that the term made some community members feel excluded], and they changed the name of their department from Citizen Science to Community Science. We didn't do that same kind of community listening, but we had the same feeling.

But there was some resistance to using “community science” as well because, historically, the term has been used to describe science that's really initiated by the community, often in environmental justice neighborhoods and communities.

We didn't want to change and co-opt a term that had been used by someone else, but then it became too much. I didn't wanna be responsible for this term—it wasn't appropriate, and I didn't wanna use it. There was a moment where we wrote the statement that's on our website, where we decided to change to “community science” to be more inclusive and more descriptive of what we do, acknowledging that term had also been used by others to describe a different type of work and recognizing that it's a bit aspirational.

We really wanna work more closely with communities and community-based organizations, and we have done that work since we started, since we changed the name. But it feels more inclusive and more reflective of the kind of work that we try to do in our department.

On the webpage you describe community science as, “where community members identify a problem, often affecting the health or wellbeing of their community, and then collect the data needed to show the impacts of this identified problem.” But you’re saying that kind of approach is what other projects have done, and you guys are more aspiring to it?

Other folks do that. There is a whole other world where, when communities have a problem, they work toward developing the science—and they possibly partner with paid scientists—to answer their questions. For us, we do a mix.

We have a set of tools and a set of expertise around biodiversity, nature, where plants and animals are found, and how that's changing. That is our expertise, so we work with the community to gather those data to help answer questions that we might have.

We try our best, when we're working closely with the community, to work with them to think about how that same type of data could help answer questions that they have. If someone came to us and was like, "I have this question about a plant in my neighborhood or my community," we could work together to do the kind of work that we do, and do science together.

If a community has a question about air quality—I'm not an expert in air quality, so I wouldn't be the one to answer that question. If a community came to me with an air quality question, I probably would be like, "Hey, here are some other people that might be able to answer this question better."

So we're not at the service of [every] community question. We try to work together and partner with community-based organizations, with governmental organizations (especially here in the state of California), with local organizations to collect biodiversity data. So, as long as it's in that biodiversity sphere.

Have there been any examples of a community member coming to you guys with a question, and that turning into a project?

That's a really good question. Often it's a funny mix. We've talked a lot about the data side of our work, but a lot of our work is helping connect, or reconnect, or rekindle people's connection to nature.

Sometimes people come to us and they're like, "Hey, we wanna get our community involved in noticing nature, and we wanna help people feel more connected to nature," because the kind of data we collect is about observing, and noticing, and taking pictures of plants and animals, and this is a nice way for people to learn more about the nature around them. So often, communities have come to us from that angle, not necessarily starting with a data question, and then they're like, "Oh, we also are collecting all this data that we can use to answer different questions."

So they're more on phase one of that [research process], which is, “We're not connected enough, we don't know enough to be able to ask these questions.” So you're doing that first.

Yeah, it's a real mix, but that's one way that people come to us. Other partners will come to us and they're like, "We are interested in this bird species or this plant species, and we wanna collect more data on it. Can you help us run these public events or these community events to help with a specific goal? We have a new section of our park, and we wanna create an atlas of this park so we have a better understanding of what's there. Can you help us in that way?"

So sometimes it's a little more applied.

“Your day-to-day experience and practice is what gives you the expertise. So keep practicing…”

How do you use the iNaturalist data for your specific research on sea slugs?

We just launched this year a new campaign that is a sea slug search, looking for sea slugs in the month of May. Of course people collect sea slug data all year long. People love nudibranchs and sea slugs. They're really hot on social media right now—they're TikTok and Instagram stars. So it was a really nice time to think about engaging the folks that already love nudibranchs or sea slugs in a campaign.

It was really fun, and I will be using that data for some research. We did a combination of using iNaturalist to collect data and a different kind of survey, where people did counts of sea slugs or nudibranchs, and those data we can compare to some historical surveys that we have that were taken in the same way.

So we'll be analyzing those data shortly to see if we can identify the changes through time. And that was done also with volunteers. So we had 25 site leaders who gathered crews of people to do this work. Although I'll be leading that research, along with folks on my team, it's research we all did together, so hopefully we'll all be authors on any publication that comes out of that work. It was really fun.

Is there any conversation around how to credit community scientists? And is having them as authors a regular practice?

There's a lot of conversation about how to credit community members.

I think it depends on how involved people were. There are different people who use different standards for credit, and there's standards for how you would give credit no matter who you're working with, whether they're paid or not.

Authorship is the highest level of involvement. In this case, these folks were leading surveys and doing the same thing that I did in the field, so it seems only fair that they would also be authors on this work, if they want to be.

I think thanking people and listing their names, or their handles, their usernames, is critically important to recognize the contributions that people have made. You can also let people know that their observations were used in your data or your publications, which is always good practice.

Some people are very good at thanking and crediting people for their data, above and beyond what you have to do. Some people are not as good, and they'll say "We got these data from iNaturalist," which wipes out the people that made the observations. I always try to give as much credit to the people that made the observations as possible.

So you’re feeding back into the community that makes them wanna go out and do more science.

Exactly.

And so these survey leaders, the volunteers, what is their background? Who are they?

There's a huge mix of people. I started with a bunch of people at first.

There are these folks that have done these surveys for the past 40, 50, 60 years. Some of the folks have been involved in doing surveys, or did them in the '60s and '70s, so I reached out to them first. So some of them are professors or curators, or retired professors or curators, and some of them were high school teachers or had other kinds of careers, but were really the experts in collecting these data.

I reached out to all of the people that are identifiers on iNaturalist who have done this incredible amount of work identifying nudibranchs and sea slugs on iNaturalist in California. I reach out to them because they have a lot of incredible expertise. Some of them are the most prolific identifiers and can identify any nudibranch you put in front of them, in California. And then I found a few people on social media who are also on iNaturalist. So they talk about sea slugs on Instagram, or TikTok, or wherever, but also they share and identify things on iNaturalist.

I also reached out to colleagues like natural history museum scientists, and sea slug and mollusk experts. [Along with] the people I knew in real life, people who have PhDs, or professors, and have a lot of experience in the field, and other people who are experts and know a lot.

We were looking for people who are great at finding and identifying nudibranchs. That's really what you had to be able to do. Whether you're a database manager, or a teacher, or a student or a nurse, or whatever your job is—if you have the expertise, and you can get along with people and work on a team, those are the most important things.

I like that—recognizing expertise no matter where it comes from.

Yeah, like I'm a nudibranch expert, that's what my PhD is in, but I am definitely not the best person to identify nudibranchs in the field in San Diego. I have to use different skills now. It's not the thing that I'm most practiced in anymore, but there are other people who are way better at that than I am.

Your day-to-day experience and practice is what gives you the expertise. So keep practicing if you want to [develop expertise in whatever interests you].

“…people are doing this work to find joy and connection, even in these times—it’s pretty inspiring.”

Is there anything else you'd like to shout out about community science at Cal Academy?

We talked a lot about the coastal campaigns that I run, but we didn't talk about the terrestrial campaigns.

My favorite terrestrial campaign is called the City Nature Challenge, and that's actually a global campaign. It started in 2016. It was a kind of biodiversity documentation contest between San Francisco and LA. We were like, “Who can get more people taking more pictures of nature over this week?"

That has now expanded into this massive global project that this year, in 2026, over 700 cities all over the world took part, and over 100,000 people collected three million observations of nature over just four days. The City Nature Challenge has now become the largest global annual biodiversity census in the world, because we're collecting three million data points from 700 cities every year. And those data are used in hundreds and hundreds of publications.

Anybody can do this project. Your city, or your region, has to be participating, but almost anybody can organize their city or their area. And, it's a fun way to get people to notice nature where they are, like I was saying before.

We're proud of the work, and all those community organizers. It's not us organizing all those 700 cities. We organize the organizers, and then they get their local place involved. We make logos for people that they can use in their work, and we translate the logos into hundreds of languages.

A lot of cities in the United States participate in the City Nature Challenge, and it's been really great to come together, especially in these rough times. Whether you're in Texas, or Florida, or Illinois, people are still out there, working together to document the nature in our places—to collect data that can be used, and stored in a free and accessible place for anybody to answer questions about those places.

It feels great to be a part of that here in the United States, in these times, and to have partners all over the world who are doing this at the same time. Other places are struggling right now as well, and when you have Ukrainian cities participating, there's lots of conflict so people are doing this work to find joy and connection, even in these times—it’s pretty inspiring. We're getting ready for 2027 now.

How would somebody go about getting their city joined up?

You can go to citynaturechallenge.org. The City Nature Challenge is organized by us here at the Cal Academy and the Natural History Museum of LA. We're the global organizing team.

It's a tiny bit early. We just had our planning retreat last week, but there's a little email list on the website, so people can sign up in this little form.

Is it still a competition between cities?

Oh, I'm so glad you asked. It is not a competition. During the COVID lockdowns, we moved away from competition, but it was still competitive. Last year, we made a shift, so it's 100% collaboration.

What we’re really working toward together is to connect our communities to nature, and also to collect data that's part of the biggest annual biodiversity census in the world. And that's not a competition, that's working together. And so we've made a really conscious shift, and it worked really well. I think people are really excited about focusing on quality data and engagement. We make observations of thousands of threatened and endangered species, and those data are really critical for conservation, and we're all doing it together.

Do you think that was more effective in getting people to join in?

I think in the beginning, the competition was a real driver. When we first started, we really talked up the competition between San Francisco and LA. We used all the sports hashtags and #BeatLA, and it was great. In 2017, it was just US cities, and people also really liked the competition. It was really fun. And for a number of years, I think competition worked to get new people on board, to get people excited.

But then it was kind of an unfair competition. We do it at the end of April, so if you are in a city in the far north, you're never gonna win. You're just not ever gonna see as many species in Alaska as you do in San Diego at the end of April.

And they're cities of different sizes, and [other] places where people live. So if you are in a very small metro area, we still want you to participate and feel value in what you're doing, and not have to just always be competing against huge places like Cape Town, South Africa, right? So it just stopped making a lot of sense.

And also some people get caught up in the competition, and take a lot of pictures of stuff that is not the most important for understanding biodiversity, because then you can get a lot of observations if you're just measuring the number of observations. It's also hard for our team of seven people to keep track of everyone, and if there's competition, sometimes it leads to behavior that is hard to manage. So we want people to just be like, "This is fun. This is super meaningful, and what we're doing together is more important than winning."

I think it had its place, and I think now it's a really different feeling. And people have really enjoyed the shift to collaboration. Some people are having a harder time with it, but generally I would say the vast majority of people are very excited about working together.

Yeah, that's interesting how, as it got bigger, it got more community focused.

“I think now, more than ever, museums are places that people can come discuss, and learn, and contribute their expertise.”

We've been talking more about community science in general than museums and other places—bridge institutions, is what I've been calling them [to describe] their role in science. Do you have thoughts on the role that museums and other institutions can play in science moving forward?

Yeah, for sure. I think museums are an amazing type of institution that play an incredible role in helping connect people to nature, and connect people to science. Museums are trusted organizations. They're some of the most trusted of all organization types.

People from all walks of life come to museums, and museums are doing a better and better job of being more inclusive to more people. And we have this role that we can play as a trusted, gathering place, a place to learn about the natural world or science overall.

We also have scientists on staff. We have a huge team of scientists that work here, scientists who have chosen careers in museums because they like to talk to the public and enjoy communicating their science to the public. So it's a group of scientists that are very good science communicators And so I think we've always been a type of organization that can fill this role to make science accessible to people, and have people see scientists as regular people, and realize through community science and other things that they can also do science, and they also have valuable expertise and experiences to share.

I think now, more than ever, museums are places that people can come discuss, and learn, and contribute their expertise. I just hope that people continue to come to museums, and museums continue to meet people where they are, and continue to do the science that we have done for many years.

We're not immune to the loss of federal funding, and the loss of connection with federal scientists But, many of us are lucky to have independent funding, like philanthropic funding, or endowments, or ways to keep on going. So in some ways, we're a little bit more protected than some universities can be.

In the end, we are beholden to the public. So if we work closely with the public and continue to tell stories, and bring people in, and create spaces where people feel included, and that their expertise and their experiences are valued, we will continue to be spaces where we can do good science, and hopefully do it together with people.

For a while it's been, “We trust federal statistics because they’re objective.” But the trust that museums have, do you think that it's different because you invite the public in?

Yeah, I think so. It's like anything—the trust you described, you have to keep on earning it, right? It's not there forever.

I think that, because we are a place for the public to come and learn, that we're held to this kind of standard. We have to be able to explain the kind of science that we do to everyone, and so that makes us more accessible. And we have to also be responsive. But at the same time we're not changing our science to be responsive. There are truths in the world.

I think it’s being open to hearing about people's experiences, and creating these moments of awe, and wonder, and joy, so people can share that experience. I think it's the fact that people can come to museums and share that feeling of awe, and wonder, and joy that makes us trusted. Because you're standing next to your neighbor who's also seeing this super cool thing, whether it's a Tyrannosaurus rex, or whatever it is, and you're all sharing that. So it creates this community, just in that experience, that leads to a kind of good feeling, but also leads to trust in the organization that's telling you the truth about those things.

Because the science is shared, the science is trusted.

That’s right.