In the US, this is because, by and large, this content is not required in the standards. In a US K-12 system, this content normally would be introduced in an AP Environmental Science class at the high school level which is usually an elective offered for juniors and seniors. (Note, not all school districts offer AP Environmental Science). A really motivated biology teacher might introduce it in the ecology unit or an Earth Science teacher if they covered Biomes.
Creating a Biodiversity Hall of Fame may or may not fill in these knowledge gaps.
If you want to create an academically rigorous experience so that the students learn something other than how to use the app, my recommendation is a robust set of educator resources be developed before the Hall of Fame is launched. This includes lesson plans aligned to standards, assessments (aka quizzes and test questions), student work sheets, videos and resources - ideally featuring scientists and SMEs - providing the necessary content background. If you want to ensure a really high quality experience for the HoF, create a professional development experience for teachers so they can earn CEUs or credit to meet re-certification requirements.
Ideally this is all created with teachers, not just for them, and the co-creators are paid. Too many projects ask teachers to donate their time. (Personal soapbox of mine).
Also I think it’s worth looking at this thread Long Term Student Engagement which focuses on college students. I wonder if @cmeckerman and @klodonnell have any updates. I know Kelly (klonnell) has put a lot of thought and effort into integrating iNat into instruction. From the thread, it sounds as if Curtis (cmeckerman) has done the same. The teachers like @brucetaterka who use iNat also have been thoughtful about how it is used in instruction.
I am pushing on the idea of a HoF not because I think it is bad but because I think it’s incomplete. Without strong educational context and support, I see a HoF as another low-quality observation rodeo with low odds of achieving the outcome of creating a more knowledgeable and engaged youth iNat user community.
I echo what @anneclewis said - I would also add a couple notes - in the US, we have state and federal endangered and threatened species laws that govern the protection of T&E species and when they get that protection, so honestly, the Red List is a concept that, for me, as someone with a more casual understanding of world ecological protections, is fairly new. I didn’t know what those acronyms you write out mean until recently. And I’m in the elder millennial bracket, and my day job involves environmental issues. Expecting kids to know international legal and policy frameworks for species protection is a bit much to expect.
I have other thoughts, but again, @anneclewis pretty much said them. Is the goal love and appreciation of the world around them? Or is it technical and legal protections? Those are two different goals and achieving them requires different methods.
iNat is not the only way for people (young or old) to get engaged with biodiversity and conservation. In spite of spending far too much time on iNat, I would even argue that it should not be the only form of engagement.
In other words, I think it is worth asking whether your perception of a lack of interest in iNat among young people is a symptom that they are not interested in nature – or whether they might simply prefer to experience it some other way.
I also agree with those who have questioned whether your proposal as sketched out here is an effective way to cultivate a genuine interest in and knowledge about biodiversity rather than merely encouraging competition or a striving for higher rankings.
It seems like a more meaningful way to approach this would be something like scouting merit badges or 4H projects (I mention these since you are in the US and it is likely you are familiar with these programs), where you identify a set of skills and areas of knowledge and some ways that participants might demonstrate that they have acquired these skills or carried out activities to promote biodiversity. iNat might be useful for recording some of these accomplishments or it might be a tool for learning, but I would not treat having a certain number of iNat observations, or species observed, or similar goals as ends in themselves – this is how you end up with the problems we see with school projects or the CNC, where numbers become more important than what the numbers are supposed to represent (engaging with nature, making a difference to biodiversity at home, changing one’s behaviors, etc.).
There have already been a number of studies that look at factors that influence participation in citizen science initiatives; some of them even explicitly look at this in relation to iNaturalist. They may or may not answer your questions, but I’d suggest starting by familiarizing yourself with the literature before trying to draw conclusions from the numbers for your sample set.
I was thinking of this myself. Some states have envirothons, where high schools compete. Some programs like granges or Future farmers of America are more agriculture focused, but may have conservation components as well. Things that get kids outside and into the world, not necessarily entering data into iNat. I built a whole native plant garden myself before I even had the confidence to use iNat, so I don’t think iNat participation is a good indicator of how engaged kids are.
Hi Quo vadis! Inat competitions don’t work well. This is my observation based on Gall Week participation and others. The intent becomes abused when a person can photograph 50 of the same gall on the same oak tree. “Most observations” of a common invasive species such as white clover do nothing to advance science. Youth become involved if parents become involved. I know a 19 year old who has documented nearly 600 moth species. My favorite ant identifier is about that age also. They are many great young experts on inat. Schools don’t have time for extra clubs: I am a teacher. My students are aware of my inat hobby, but rarely ask what I’ve been finding, When they do ask, it is to delay the lesson a few minutes. Do not assume that most science teachers know about field biology. I’ve never yet in 28 years taught with one who did. I agree that scouts or 4H ior FFA is the way to go. At least an ag teacher once showed me a moth! The woman at my school who teaches advanced biology focuses on cells, not organisms.
There is no rule against uploading multiple observations if they represent different specimens or even a single specimen over time. I agree that it is annoying for IDers and observers should consider what their purpose is in uploading many observations of the same species from the same time and place, but observers are not necessarily doing this just for the numbers. Users have a wide range of backgrounds and reasons for participation on iNat; in some cases, it may satisfy a need to count and document and they may struggle to see why they should not create observations for every individual they saw.
It is also not necessarily the case that large numbers of observations of a common and/or invasive species are going to be useless for science. There may be some research questions – for example, if someone is studying variability within a population – where having a large number of observations from a particular site may in fact be quite valuable. We don’t know in advance what uses researchers might have for iNat data.
This is not to say that I think that observers should be encouraged to post separate observations for every individual they saw on a regular basis; this would quickly overwhelm IDers even in taxa where there is normally no shortage of IDing capacity. But in practice, I suspect it is unlikely to become a problem because the vast majority of users would quickly lose interest in posting dozens of nearly-identical observations – even if they are pursuing numbers.
Thanks for your response, earthknight. I agree: I dislike the gamification of things. And a poorly structured/incentivized HoF competition could certainly devolve into/typically produce a bunch of trash observations. Structured properly, possibly even with demits/deductions being given, I think it could induce more serious/thoughtful observations, and cultivate the kind of desire to learn and contribute we’d all like to see.
Again, though, we don’t see that phenomenon in other such school-based competitions/reward systems (Sports Halls of Fame, Honors Band, Debate, National Merit Scholars, etc., or the non-school based traveling/select teams). Nearly every other interest is accommodated, without the kind of quality concerns people have expressed. Perhaps there should be a “JV” team and a “Varsity” team, and only those with serious/requisite skills and attitudes could even be considered…lots of well-established ways in schools to weed out unserious participants.
I think it’s extremely uncontroversial to say that we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. And I think it’s also extremely uncontroversial to say that schools don’t even seem to have it in their radar, whereas athletics seem to be almost out of control. Here’s an interesting article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/01/07/youth-sports-cost-parents-investors-profit/
Surely the National Federation of State High School Associations seems to have been captured by sports interests: www.nfhs.org/ A BHoF would give it an opportunity to provide some balance in its “programming”.
I haven’t investigated how it would be handled at the post-secondary level (and that’s probably where I should start: I’ll be sending emails to colleges and universities next week).
Thanks for the reply, Annie. I agree that competitions haven’t gone well in the past. However, I think that is likely the result of things that have been mentioned: science teachers lacking understanding of field biology (maybe hiring practices need to be adjusted?); AP Environmental Sci courses as electives, if offered at all; biodiversity relegated to an “extra club” or shoehorned into a “producer” club like 4H or FFA. It’s no wonder why we have a biodiversity crisis. Meanwhile, sports predominate, even at the youngest levels, without seeming concern or question. IMHO, the NFHS has been either extremely negligent, or become completely captured by sports interests.
Is it really impossible to imagine the creation of something like Cooperstown to inspire the next generation of environmental stewards? Is it impossible to think that young minds, which have been diverted into holding athletes up as heroes, and who memorized endless stats about individual athletes, and who can name every player on every team, couldn’t have their attention and priorities refocused onto the species we share the plant with (or at least the species within their ecoregion)? How can it be that students can name more corporate logos than species? (This, it turns out, was actually never tested in a classroom - but it should be part of a pretest/posttest at every grade level.)
I’m going to test the hypothesis that younger students can’t be trained to make excellent observations, and that the “legal and policy frameworks for species protection” are a bit much too expect. IMHO, those should be required basic minimums. I’m going to offer indoor bioblitzes (or field trips as someone suggested) in school libraries. And I’m going to actually ask students if they would like to see a Biodiversity Hall of Fame created for their schools. This might actually cause a (IMHO long overdue) shift in hiring and extracurricular opportunities (I can imagine lots of teachers wanting the extra pay that comes from being the sponsor of a nature-based “team”).
Thanks for your response, spiphany. I am a SciStarter Ambassador, and am very familiar with literature, and intend to design studies that could answer that question, among others. I certainly appreciate your feedback.
I was interested in animals very young and then was homeschooled which gave me the time and flexibility to study my own interests. In my childhood I studied field guides instead of Pokemon or hockey cards. My parents also took me on hikes, to local naturalist club events, to see rare birds etc. Sometimes plants or other taxa would come up in naturalist hikes but generally my curiosity about invertebrates had nothing to sustain it. I had limited access to web browsers, never found anything that linked to BugGuide, and iNat was even more obscure than that at the time.
Sometime I meet parents who have kids who are interested in nature (usually homeschooled or in private schools) and they tell me they hope their kids will grow up to be more interested. But they take their kids to hockey games and not to naturalist club hikes. All that to say - public schools and normal parents don’t do a great job at incentivising kids to get into biodiversity. The young people who do get into it tend to be outliers in some way with regards to their education, parents, neurodivergent, etc. Nature clubs or encouragement from biology teachers would help spark curiosity but would presumably require working against pressure from peers and general low level of interest.
There are two sources of this in my experience with young people: being forced to make observations for grades (school students) and lack of familiarity with social and internet etiquette (generally more the case with socially isolated and/or neurodivergent people). In both cases if iNat strikes their interest they will mellow out and quality will improve as they participate more.
American collegiate sports, especially football, baseball, and basketball, bring in thousands to millions in revenue (tickets, sponsors, TV revenue) and lots of prestige and attention for winning teams. So, schools offer athletic scholarships to attract talented students.
The college athletes can study anything they choose. Many get a 4 year degree and don’t play professional sports, because only the best of the best can go on to major leagues.