Inspiring and Engaging the Public Towards a Shared Understanding and Sense of Ownership of Freshwater Ecosystems A. Mauroner a, I.J. Harrison ab, & M. Thieme ac a IUCN-SSC/WI Freshwater Fish Specialist Group ( b The Biodiversity Group ( c World Wildlife Fund ( Global Freshwater Fish BioBlitz: “Crowdsourcing for Conservation” The ‘Global Freshwater Fish BioBlitz’ was launched in February 2014 by the Freshwater Fish Specialist Group, of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission and Wetlands International, in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund and several other international groups. Its objective is to engage nature lovers in freshwater fish conservation. People from around the world, such as anglers, photographers, and students, are invited to upload photographs of freshwater fishes observed in their natural habitat, with details of where and when they saw the fish. With approximately 16,000 freshwater fish species described and numbers growing, the more people ‘on the ground’ carrying out observations and recording what they have seen and where they have seen it, the better. Volunteers with expertise in fish taxonomy serve as curators to identify and verify the species to ensure the data is research-grade. The Freshwater Fish BioBlitz works principally as a crowd- sourcing social network, and secondarily as a mechanism to help archive useful data. Individuals are part of the social network and share information on species. The information is incorporated into the iNaturalist project database, which is fully integrated with and can harness photographs from Facebook and Flickr, making it easy to turn photographs posted to these sites into iNaturalist observations. The Freshwater BioBlitz enables nature lovers and conservation scientists to work together to map these unique species and help conserve freshwater fishes. How it Works Participants create an account on the iNaturalist website ( and join the Global Freshwater BioBlitz Project. From there they upload observations and the relevant information, including: pictures, location, and species identification (if known). Other users leave comments or suggest a species ID for photographs that are unidentified. Expert curators (approved ichthyologists and freshwater fish experts) review and verify the accuracy of the species identifications. Only these data are classified as research-grade. Application to Science and Conservation Observations that have been verified as research-grade can be passed on to data archives such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), GEO BON, and Encyclopedia of Life. GBIF automatically harvests data on a regular basis. iNaturalist is also the first citizen science effort to feed data into the IUCN Red List. Data generated via the BioBlitz serves several important functions: it can confirm the distribution of species, and fill gaps in our knowledge of species’ distributions where fieldwork has not been conducted extensively or recently. The information in BioBlitz can also show how distributions are changing; for example, due to climate change or other environmental disturbance. The information may be used to supplement other sources for assessments of the risk of extinction for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The data on species distributions will be informative for GEO BON’s ‘Essential Biodiversity Variables’ – a set of measurements that capture major dimensions of biodiversity change. The records in BioBlitz can also identify the arrival and spread of introduced species that might threaten native species. It may also help scientists to describe new species, as has been the case with the Global Amphibian BioBlitz. “The more data we have on the species present in our wetlands, the better we can manage them. The Freshwater Fish BioBlitz will provide a wealth of essential information for managing our wetlands and their fish species.” -Christopher Briggs, Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Many thanks to Richard Sneider (FFSG), GEO BON, WWF-US and the Citizen Science Association for funding support. Observations are incorporated into the iNaturalist project database and added to a global map. The image below shows some locations of contributions from participants across the globe. Since the project’s inception, over 1675 observations have been uploaded by 168 participants as of January Image 1: Sample observation added by N. American participant Image 2: Global distribution of observations uploaded to project’s website Image 3: Observations grouped taxonomically Image 4: Users and researchers can export data and observations to use as layers in mapping applications such as Google Earth The Freshwater BioBlitz website includes guidelines on how to take good photographs of fishes, the humane treatment of animals, and guides for curators on data classification. Data can be presented in a taxonomic hierarchy, and exported for GIS analysis, as below.