When he was an Ontario Parks superintendent, Chuck Miller’s work involved building trails and a visitor centre, overseeing emergencies such as lost hikers and forest fires, and drafting management plans for some of Ontario’s greatest natural treasures. But it wasn’t until he retired and started spending more time at his camp east of Elliot Lake, Ont., that he became interested in documenting his trips in nature. Chuck’s passion for exploring Northern Ontario backroads by bicycle and wandering through rare habitats, such as sparsely wooded limestone alvars on Manitoulin Island, was ignited six years ago. After an outing with the local naturalists, club in his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, a friend “showed me how you could take pictures on a smartphone and this website—iNaturalist—would give you four or five suggestions of what it might be,” says Chuck. “I did not own a phone, but thought it was a pretty interesting application.” Then, three years later, “I took a nice picture of a hawk on my digital camera,” he says. “Hawk ID can be confusing, so I gave iNaturalist a try using my computer.”
Chuck got his answer: it was a red-tailed hawk. And with that, he was well on his way to becoming an avid user of an increasingly popular way to connect with nature. Now, whenever he goes biking, hiking, or snowshoeing, Chuck is a citizen scientist—part of a growing cadre of nature enthusiasts using apps, such as iNaturalist and eBird, to learn about the environment while contributing important data that supports research and drives conservation around the world. The movement has become increasingly important as governments cut measures to steward endangered species and habitats.
“I knew a bit about birds just from spending a lot of time outdoors,” says Chuck, who routinely tracks the blooming of roadside and woodland plants and the metamorphosis of colourful butterflies on weekly outings spring through fall. “But I had little experience using technical guides for plant and insect identification.”
iNaturalist is an app where participants can submit geotagged photos of pretty much anything in nature. It emerged from a Master’s thesis project by three students at the University of California, Berkeley nearly 20 years ago. The non-profit was created as an “online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature,” according to its creators. It’s since been beefed up with artificial intelligence to suggest a potential ID for organisms in photos. The platform then relies on a community of users to confirm species’ identifications; participants can exchange messages with subject experts to improve their own ID skills. In 2025, iNaturalist reached 250 million verifiable observations from about four million users.
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Scientists can use verified observations to track species’ distribution and breeding behaviour and the impacts of climate change on specific ecosystems. Government bodies such as the Ontario MNRF and Parks Canada, as well as many non-profit land trusts and other conservation groups, have special iNaturalist “projects” where citizen scientists can contribute observations of species in specific areas. This creates more comprehensive inventories of biodiversity, and in some cases, habitat protection, since it’s used by governments to inform and update resource management, such as forestry and wetland conservation on Crown land. eBird is a separate app created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology with a similar premise, helping birders identify species and tally observations, with more than 100 million contributions of bird sightings per year from users around the world. According to its organizers, eBird participation is growing at a rate of 20 per cent annually.
Chuck says the iNaturalist platform has been easy to use. He logs in on public computers at libraries or coffee shops when he’s staying at his off-grid camp. “I was originally motivated to learn,” he says. “More recently, I’ve become interested in making a contribution by identifying more obscure species in places where they are not commonly recorded on iNaturalist.” These include the olympia marble and hoary elfin butterflies—delicate, intricately patterned insects associated with specific plants unique to alvar habitats, on Manitoulin Island.
iNaturalist has fast-tracked participation in citizen science projects, especially on private nature reserves, such as the 16 protected areas managed by the Central Algoma Land Trust, east of Sault Ste. Marie. Nearly 1,700 species have been logged by 125 community scientists through the non-profit conservation organization’s iNaturalist projects, including the least bittern, a locally rare marsh bird; the lilypad clubtail, a species of dragonfly previously undocumented in the region; and limestone oak fern, an at-risk plant mainly found on the Bruce Peninsula.
But citizen science was happening long before social media. For example, last year marked the 126th anniversary of the Christmas Bird Count, a holiday tradition where volunteers tally bird sightings all around the world. (The project is organized by the U.S. National Audubon Society.) In Canada, many provinces have breeding bird atlases, which rely on the birding community to gather data that allows biologists to track changes in populations across 20-year cycles. Similar initiatives have relied on the public to record species of reptiles and amphibians, as well as butterflies, says Jenna Quinn, the acting conservation science and stewardship director with Ontario Nature, an environmental non-profit. “There are so many unknowns about these sorts of creatures that live under logs and in wetlands,” she says. “The amount of data we could generate is really important to learning about their distribution.”
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Since 1981, Birds Canada, a nonprofit dedicated to bird conservation, has relied on cottagers to collect data for its Canadian Lakes Loon Survey, which started amidst fears of the impacts of acid rain on the common loon. The survey encompasses more than 500 lakes across the country and asks volunteers to identify the territories of common loon pairs, confirm nesting has occurred, and count the surviving chicks around Labour Day.
The project started as “an efficient way to get lots of data across huge spatial scales,” says Doug Tozer, the director of waterbirds and wetlands at Birds Canada. “But it’s more than gathering data. Volunteers come to identify with their loons. It becomes personal. If they see changes, they want to know why, and they want to do something about it,” he says. “The connection and stewardship of mobilizing people to participate and care is really infectious.”
As the threat of acid rain faded and loon populations stabilized and recovered, there was talk of revisiting the importance of the survey, which has involved about 4,000 volunteers since its inception. About a decade ago, however, data suggesting a diminishing number of loon chicks began to raise alarm bells again. Researchers believe the decline may stem from a combination of factors related to climate change. For a long-lived species such as loons, counting chicks affords a “kind of early warning system,” says Tozer. “We wouldn’t necessarily be aware of the decline if we were just counting the adults.”
Even an individual citizen scientist can have an impact. In Nova Scotia, self-taught paleontologist Brian Hebert has made several significant fossil discoveries, which have been reported in the prestigious journal Nature. On Cape Breton Island, Hebert found the 315-million-year-old remains of an adult and baby of the same prehistoric reptile in one rock, establishing the earliest known evidence of parental care. He also first identified the fossilized remains of a new, toothed lizard that could be the planet’s first terrestrial herbivore. (Tyrannoroter heberti was named in his honour: “Hebert’s tyrant digger.”)
Citizen scientists monitor aspects of the biophysical environment as well. Amateur weather enthusiasts from across North America contribute to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, a project administered by the U.S. National Weather Service that aims to get a better handle on precipitation amounts. Since 1998, the project has engaged more than 27,500 volunteers to simply measure precipitation in their backyards using a standard measuring tube each time it rains, hails, or snows, and submit the data to help ground-truth weather forecasts. Environment and Climate Change Canada has its own volunteer Weather Watcher Program, which has been around since 1978.
Meanwhile, Lakehead University PhD candidate Nathan Wilson is investigating how public observations can improve the detection of blue-green algae outbreaks on lakes in northwestern Ontario. “There are so many bodies of water in Canada and too many changes are happening to expect any one government agency to be able to adequately collect data and keep up-to-date records,” says Wilson, citing the Lake Partnership Program, a collaboration between the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations and the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks as a way cottagers can serve as freshwater sentinels. “Without citizens’ support, there is a high likelihood that changes will go unnoticed until it’s too late.”
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Last year, Ontario’s auditor general Shelley Spence warned that the public was being increasingly shut out of participating in decisions related to the environment. The omnibus Bill 5 is an example of a Canada-wide trend to prioritize development over conservation, including measures to dismiss public comment as red tape, says Jenna Quinn. Citizen science is a reminder that “conservation is not just something scientists and governments do,” she adds. “It’s a call for all of us to be active in nature protection.”
In Ontario, iNaturalist users can submit observations to the provincial Natural Heritage Information Centre’s rare species project. This allows citizen scientists to report sightings of important species to a database used by government biologists and resource planners. For example, submitting a photo of a wood turtle (endangered in Ontario), a bald eagle nest, or a black bear den on Crown land could garner protection for the immediate area from forestry operations.
Parks Canada relies on citizen science to monitor changes in coastal ecosystems, such as erosion in Point Pelee, Pukaskwa, and Bruce Peninsula national parks. Volunteer “turtle trackers” at Bruce Peninsula have also helped to identify and protect nearly 700 turtle nests since 2018, while wildlife observations posted online have contributed to new records of species at risk in Georgian Bay Islands National Park, including red knot, a shorebird whose annual migrations span all of North and South America.
One of the most practical contributions community scientists can make? Helping track invasive species, especially at any of Ontario Nature’s 26 nature reserves, says Quinn. “If you make an observation of invasive phragmites on iNaturalist, we’re going to see that. We’re going to work it into our action plan and priorities.”
Chuck Miller’s discovery of citizen science has helped redefine his sense of place. His remote camp is now a base for exploration. “It started out of curiosity and ended up breaking my routine, forcing me to look closer, slower, and in new places,” he says. “It made me think in terms of what I may find in different habitats I once barely knew existed—sand plains, alvars, bogs—and looking for particular ecosystem ‘indicators,’ including plants like rock cress and sweet fern. There’s a specific timing for different flowers and butterflies. Everything changes from week to week.”
This article was originally published in the Spring 2026 issue of Cottage Life.
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