Sparks in the Forest: Teaching Curiosity in Ecuador

General
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Last year, I spent a week in Canandé, one of Ecuador’s last lowland rainforests, running hands-on workshops with park guards. The goal was simple: see if curiosity could survive, spread, and change how people care for their forests—using iNaturalist as an essential tool.

The forest was dark and wet. Phones cracked, batteries died, and most sparks sputtered. But a few guards—especially Amado, who grew up felling these giants and now patrols them—kept the flame alive. One guard crouched in the mud, photographing a tiny yellow-spotted tree frog. Another got excited over a magnolia seed pod. For a moment, the forest became a classroom, and the sparks caught.

It wasn’t magic. It was recognition, feedback, play—and a little competition. On paper, we logged 3,500 observations in a week. But the real question is: how do you keep that spark going once you leave the forest?

I’d love to hear from this community: How do you help curiosity catch fire in the field? How do you turn brief moments of engagement into habits that actually last? Any tricks, rituals, or experiments that work for you?

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You may find this thread helpful in that context, many of the ideas there will be relevant: An Idea To Promote Explosive Growth for INaturalist and its Data

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thanks, upupa…:)

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How many have an ID - to Family at least?

What % are RG ?

If a project, have you attracted a team of interested identifiers? The observers need encouraging, but ultimately each of them has to decide whether iNatting appeals.

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17% to research grade; which, considering the location (lowland coastal rainforest, NW Ecuador) I think is awesome; a great majority are to family. I have contacted identifiers–which is tricky here, since most of the highly qualified specialist hold their noses to the idea of citizen science–and most of those specialists just don’t have the time, either. But yes, I am engaging with identifiers regularly. The observers are former loggers, and people picked out of the jungle, most aren’t on the…academic side of life. I called a group of them the other day (about a dozen guards), zoom-style, and just by doing that, 25 observations appeared out of nowhere, out of thin air, because some had forgotten about iNat. It’s amazing what just asking them ‘how’s it going’ goes; they live in a very remote area, and so a simple ‘hello and what’s up?’ does wonders. Have you checked out my writing on the subject? I write about my field work here.

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Oh, and here is a link to the Canandé project–I can’t imagine anyone on this forum being very interested, but even ID’ing to kingdom and saying, ‘hola’ to these guys and gals can have an impact. Plus, you can ogle cool jungle things :slight_smile: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/canande-guardabosques?tab=observations

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I’ll give it a go. Many, for example, plant or butterfly families are recognizable throughout the Neotropics, even if I am unfamiliar with local species.

[EDIT] Already took one to Genus Coendou

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Will come back to your project - but your link answers my question.

You have over 1K active identifiers. Whether they come by taxon sweep, or location, or at random - some will return.

You can also leave a comment, with the project link, on the IdentiFriday thread.

More insects than plants … so would be good to encourage those identifiers to take a look?

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Yahoo!

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that’s a great idea–getting help from the bug folks–sometimes i forget about the most diverse group of all, ouch. IdentiFriday–I guess I don’t spend enough time in the forum. You lost me there :)

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3.000 observations in one week??? X.x i have 1700 only in a couple of years. Jealous.

Im tropical dry forest. Hi from Colombia. Are you hispanic?

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I’d love to turn your question on its head and ask, “What do people like Amado get from using iNaturalist?” Is it to satisfy their curiosity and get things identified? Is it to contribute to knowledge about the forest they work in? Is it to collect photos of interesting things they see? I would love to find out from people like Amado why they continue to use iNaturalist and what they hope to get out of it.

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that’s definitely not unusual in the tropics, my observations from the Amazon are about 30% RG but if you exclude birds it’s closer to 20%, there aren’t too many resources online and some species might not even be described, even stuff that’s easy to photograph with a phone. Honestly it looks like they’ve found some neat stuff! I tried to help with a few birds

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Here you go, Where the ID addicts gather … over 2K comments - perhaps the longest running thread in the forum? Use the hamburger (most engaged / engaging comments - still 100 - we ID!) or twinkly stars (AI summary) icons at the bottom.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identifriday-is-the-happiest-day-of-the-week/26908

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Moving people from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation is a mysterious, multi-ingredient cocktail unique to each person. Like a cocktail (or maybe soup if you don’t drink) you have the four main ingredients of relevance, mastery, enjoyment, and meaning but the mix varies.

Going a little deeper into the ingredients:

Relevance - does this opportunity offer a skill or knowledge that they find useful (with a very wide definition of useful)

Mastery - are they comfortable with their skill level? Do they feel a sense of accomplishment? Is there a way for them, if they so desire, to improve?

Enjoyment - this one’s pretty self explanatory but do they enjoy it? This is important for hobbies.

Meaning - does this give them a sense of contribution and connection?

If you think of these factors like levers on a sound board (mixing my metaphors, sorry about that) there are a lot different combinations that will lead to intrinsic motivation. For a non iNat related example of what intrinsic motivation can look like, let’s unpack how this relates to how I am teaching myself piano on a 61 keyboard using a book and YouTube videos.

Relevance - I find piano playing useful as a stress reliever and way to distract myself from ::gestures:: everything.

Mastery - I am slow, probably with little innate talent (don’t know, don’t care), but I do feel pretty good at what I have been able to do. I have decided that if I ever want to get really good, I will take proper lessons, but right now my sense of mastery aligns with what I want out of the experience. Contrast this with the time I tried to teach myself the autoharp. No book. No YouTube videos. I just plinked around, pretty quickly hit a point where I wasn’t making progress. The autoharp sits under my bed in its case.

Enjoyment - This lever is all the way up for all and the major motivation.

Meaning - This lever is probably the lowest. I have a slight sense of connection in that I can think of myself as a (very new, not terribly skilled) piano player and sometimes that sense of identity that connects to a larger group is enough. Sometimes, it’s not.

I don’t think I gave you much that is actionable but hopefully this provides clarity on what you can do to support these neophyte iNatters. This sounds like a fascinating project and I wish them many happy hours iNatting.

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Thanks, zygy. Yeah, I love flipping questions around—and that one about Amado really hits it. I actually started a little pilot here in Mindo back in early 2020 asking myself the same question. Still don’t have the answer, ha! The other day I gave a tiny workshop here, and one guy—probably the most business-minded of the lot—goes, “So how can we monetize the data we generate if we start submitting observations?” And I just wanted to jump off the balcony. Of all the things that could keep your curiosity burning for iNat, that kind of thinking is the surest way to kill it. Unless you’re on salary, curiosity dies the moment you start chasing that one.

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my apologies; I am not sure I am hitting the right response button for each of you:)