iNaturalist

About the Organization

iNaturalist is a lot of different things, but at its core, iNaturalist serves as an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. It's also a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool. You can use it to record your own observations, get help with identifications, collaborate with others to collect this kind of information for a common purpose, or access the observational data collected by iNaturalist users.

iNaturalist helps you identify the plants and animals around you while generating data for science and conservation. Get connected with a community of millions scientists and naturalists who can help you learn more about nature! What's more, by recording and sharing your observations, you'll create research-quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. So if you like recording your findings from the outdoors, or if you just like learning about life.

Vision: iNaturalist's vision is a world where everyone can understand and sustain biodiversity through the practice of observing wild organisms and sharing information about them.

Mission: iNaturalist's mission is to connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation through technology.

History of iNaturalist

Ken-ichi Ueda originally conceived of the idea for iNaturalist in 2005, and it was launched as the Master's final project of Ken-ichi, Nate Agrin, and Jessica Kline at UC Berkeley's School of Information in 2008. Nate and Ken-ichi continued working on the site after graduation. In 2010, Ken-ichi began collaborating with Scott Loarie. In 2011, Scott and Ken-ichi organized as iNaturalist, LLC. They began growing the community and expanding the platform, including launching the first mobile app. In 2014, iNaturalist became an initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and a joint initiative with National Geographic Society in 2017. In 2023, iNaturalist became an independent nonprofit organization. Ken-ichi served as Co-director until 2023 and as a Software Engineer from 2023 to 2025. What began as a student project grew into one of the world's largest biodiversity platforms, connecting millions of people to their local nature while contributing critical data to science and conservation.

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