I am a regular Inaturalist user. Often I travel abroad with the intent of seeking and photographing as much of the local vertebrate life as possible. However, I usually can only go for a relatively short period of time around studies and work. This means I rarely have enough time to properly know the area.
I was wondering if it is unheard of to actually reach out to regular Inat users from a place I am travelling to and see if they want to meetup and share with me their knowledge and let me join them for nature related outings. Has anybody done this/had succes with this? It would be interesting to hear others experience to get an idea of how much of a social network Inat CAN be. For example, I am planning a trip to singapore and have noted a few individuals that make very interesting observations of the local fish life via angling and thought mabye my partner and I could join them.
this is definitely something that happens all the time! I actually mention in my iNat profile that if anyone finds themselves in Sydney, feel free to reach out to me and I’m always happy to take them on a walk somewhere and show them interesting species. Over the last few years I’ve met up in Sydney with other iNatters from the USA, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, and lots of other places from within Australia
so certainly worth sending a message to someone and asking if they’re interested; the worst that can happen is they say no
I have done it a few times and met up with wonderful people with likeminded interests.
A great way to see places you would not have gotten to, as well as discuss ideas and other iNat topics.
If I notice other users in the place I’m going to with lots of observations in an area that I’m interested in, I message them via iNat to ask about places to visit, etc.
I’ll even reach out via contact links provided on websites if there’s a museum or collection related to my interests. I’ve made some great connections which really brought an entirely new perspective to the city/country I’m visiting and made some pretty good e-penpals as well. Some of them don’t even use iNat but they’re scientists in the field of interest.
Plan ahead! Reach out before you get there. Often the timing won’t work out, so networking online to establish connections really helped me out.
It’s something I’ve definitely done (including meeting up with @thebeachcomber when I visited Sydney!) and it’s a lot of fun. I also attended an iNat workshop in Singapore in 2020 and we met up with a bunch of people over a few days, it was great. There were a lot of generous folks there who showed us around.
Like you should any time you go out into nature, make sure you tell someone where you’re going and who you’re meeting there. I’m sure 99.9% of the time someone you’d met via iNat would be fine, but it’s always good to be prudent.
I’ve thought about offering tours of my property to iNaturalisters. It’s over 200 ha and I’ve identified over 400 plant species, over 200 bird species, and over 2,000 total species on or adjacent to the property. Since it is also an active reforestation project, I thought it might be something iNatters would like to visit.
One way to approach this is to pick someone who does a lot of IDs in the area you’re visiting, tell them about your upcoming visit and say you’d appreciate having them check your IDs when you are there. When I visited western Oregon for several days, my identifier was right on top of my postings so I learned each day what I was seeing and by the end of the trip I knew the main local species. Much better than waiting till I got home. In this case I didn’t propose meeting up, but one could say “and if you have time, maybe it would be fun to visit one of your favorite spots together.”
I’ll look up the top observers in an area I’m planning to visit and message a few to ask if they can recommend good spots to visit, or would be interested in potentially meeting up - I’ve had very good luck. Even the ones who aren’t interested in meeting will usually give some great tips on things to look for.
Well, forum users may not be representative of the sociality of the iNat population as a whole, but I think most people would not be offended by a polite query indicating that you will be in the area and you would be grateful for tips/suggestions and that you are also open to meeting up if they would be interested.
In some parts of the world you probably want to be careful to not come across as a nature tourist who is only interested in virtual “trophies” without respect for the local traditions or environment.
In principle, I’d be happy to get to know other iNatters in person or go on an outing together. However, my response would probably depend a bit on whether the asker is someone who I have interacted with in the past and feel like we have common interests/philosophies or someone who is a complete stranger.
I’d be happy to share information about public spots. I would probably be more hesitant to share my “private” spots (the more obscure ones that I found on my own). In my area, this isn’t so much because there are populations of rare species that I fear would be threatened by doing so, but because some of these places are personally meaningful to me, so there is a sense of intimacy that I feel a need to protect. For this reason, and also as a woman, I would probably also be more comfortable limiting joint iNatting to well-frequented public spaces unless the user is someone I feel like I already know well from iNat.
I’ve had a couple of versions of that. Once someone approached me about my area looking for good bee locations, we’ve since hit the field several times.
Another was one of the other bee identifiers @kyleprice1 was in an adjacent area to me, so we hit the field for a couple of days and made a camping trip out of it.
Just day trips, I think. I’m within two hours of some of the world’s most biodiverse National Parks so it would be more just for people looking to identify plants and animals away from the crowds. Maybe plant a tree or two for the sake of biodiversity.
I do this from time to time. I just did recently to start working on Texas species.
Some people are naturally skeptical, especially all the introverts on here so don’t be offended if someone doesn’t take you up on it. Just be thankful for the ones who do. I have had some great trips.