BC Biodiversity Program – Starzomski Lab

BC Biodiversity Program

Documenting Biodiversity in BC’s Parks and Protected Areas

In 2019, in an effort to find out what species were being protected in BC’s protected areas network, we created the BC Biodiversity Program (formerly known as the BC Parks iNaturalist Project), in conjunction with Dr. John Reynolds (Simon Fraser University) and BC Parks. Using community science applications such as iNaturalist, eBird, and BugGuide, we have documented thousands of species and contributed some incredible findings: new populations of rare and at-risk species, first detections of exotic species, first known live photographs of species, and even discovering species totally new to science. Each year, we hire a team of young naturalists to travel around the province, documenting as many species as possible, in what some have described as “the best job in the world”.

The most incredible thing about this program? Anyone can contribute: simply take a photo of any living thing within a provincial protected area and upload it to iNaturalist. Since the program’s inception in 2019, when the BC Parks project had only ~17,000 biodiversity observations, that number has grown to over a million observations of more than 13,500 unique species. We couldn’t have made it there without the contributions of more than 14,000 observers.

For more info, and to find out when we are hiring for our summer teams, keep an eye on our website.