# Scott Loarie interview with Eva Cornman (Museum of Science, Boston)

**URL:** <https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/scott-loarie-interview-with-eva-cornman-museum-of-science-boston/75728>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [February 14, 2026, 1:41am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/scott-loarie-interview-with-eva-cornman-museum-of-science-boston/75728 "2026-02-14T01:41:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![AdamWargon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/adamwargon/32/44649_2.png) [@AdamWargon](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/AdamWargon)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2026, 1:41am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/scott-loarie-interview-with-eva-cornman-museum-of-science-boston/75728/1 "2026-02-14T01:41:14Z")

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> [@Is the iNat directorship taking iNat in the right direction and paying enough attention to the user base?](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/is-the-inat-directorship-taking-inat-in-the-right-direction-and-paying-enough-attention-to-the-user-base/74434/258):
>
> here’s a video that may be of interest to some: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRVFYKkBwrc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRVFYKkBwrc). it’s a podcast where loarie talks about iNaturalist. i don’t know if there’s anything new here exactly, but if you don’t already have an idea of he’s thinking about generally and what has shaped his viewpoint, this may provide some of that insight.

Thanks @pisum for sharing this link!

I created this thread so we don’t go off-topic in the other thread.

To debrief from the talk, here are some things that @loarie said that resonated with me:

**Birds:**

- At 8:58 _“Birders are so insane!”_
- At 9:11 _“Birds are 0.5% of the tree of life, but 80% of what we know about the natural world . . . are birds!”_
- It reminded me of a post that Diana made: 10 minutes to Research Grade!

> [@Becoming an iNat curator](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/becoming-an-inat-curator/61192/30):
>
> Bird in Africa - works like a charm - [10 minutes to RG](https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/260042958)

**CNC:**

- At 27:02 _“In 2025 . . . almost a thousand cities [participated in the CNC]. Just these thousand . . . cities . . . were able to . . . census 1 in 20 of all species on the planet. Which is crazy to think about!”_
- Alison @kestrel and Robbie @yayemaster, I don’t remember if that was mentioned in the CNC training materials, but it is impressive!

**A message of hope:**

- At 29:01, Scott said, _“I grew up on a river in Northern California . . . that was what got me interested in nature . . . that river was really beat down . . . When I was in college . . . bald eagles came back . . . steelhead came back . . . the foothill yellow-legged frog came back . . . That was just . . . people stopping doing the horrible things that were happening in the 1970s . . . Let’s not throw all our pesticides into this river. Let’s not put dams up right when the steelhead [spawn]. It made me realize . . . there are little things we can do, to act, and these ecosystems will respond to it!”_
- Scott has told this story of river recovery before, and I love it! Stories of hope and inspiration are important, because there is a lot of doom and gloom in the environmental movement, but in order to motivate people, they need to feel like they can make a difference! They need a future that they can look forward to!

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