I just joined the Blogger Bioblitz, initiated by Jeremy Bruno at ScienceBlogs. As Jeremy puts it:
In honor of National Wildlife Week, April 21 – 29, I am inviting bloggers from all walks to participate in the First Annual Blogger Bioblitz, where bloggers from across the country will choose a wild or not-so-wild area and find how many of each different species – plant, animal, fungi and anything in between – live in a certain area within a certain time.
I’ve become a fan of “citizen science” – projects that empower regular plain-old folks to collect data and submit it to umbrella organizations that can use it to track trends or pinpoint trouble spots. A couple of great examples of these include:
- Adopt-A-Stream
- Christmas Bird Count (in its 107th season!)
- Project FeederWatch
What a great way to promote understanding of environmental issues, spread awareness about habitat and biodiversity loss, educate people about the creatures with whom we share the world, and collect data all at the same time. As Wengari Maathi points out, empowering people to improve the problems we see provides hope in the environmental movement.
If you are so inclined, join the Bioblitz, or any of these citizen science projects and empower yourself.
