Written by: Corey Tatz – ‘Bulding Connections for Biodiversity in the Central Tablelands’ Project Officer

It has been an absolute pleasure hosting our first citizen science project as part of our Landcare and BCT partnership! Thank you to everyone involved for this 12 month pilot project.

We recorded more than 4000 observations and 900 species from a team of 26 observers, with these observations holding 72% research grade. Of the species recorded the top three species were Plants (37.98%), Insects (29.72%), and Birds (12.12%). But we also recorded Fungi (8.8%), Arachnids (4.29%), Reptiles (2.25%), and Mammals (1.82%).

Total Observations and species recorded in iNaturalist for the ‘Building Connections’ project

The Top 10 recorded species are illustrated below. The Common Brown Butterfly (Heteronympha merope) really was common this year as our most recorded species. It was hard to go anywhere without seeing these beautiful butterfly’s during Summer.

Next up is a map of where the observations have occurred across the Central Tablelands. There is so much more of the region we can visit to get observations from. The project has been set up to cover the Local Government areas that best align with our Central Tablelands Landcare Groups.

We are excited to announce that the iNaturalist project has now been extended to 2025. It is hoped that we can really target our efforts in the coming years to focus on particular local geographical areas of interest, or align with other biodiversity species counts such as Frog ID week, bee counts, bird counts, The Great Southern Bioblitz, and other focus areas of interest to our community!  If you have suggestions for project focus, please feel free to reach out. Depending on interest and needs of our community we might even be able to offer some photography skills workshops, and some more info sessions on how to use platforms such as iNaturalist.

If you haven’t yet joined, but are interested in taking part follow this link to our iNat community site: https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/projects/building-connections-for-biodiversity-in-the-central-tablelands-nsw

and don’t forget to join our facebook page here.

You can contact myself (Corey) at centraltablelandsbct@gmail.com or you can contact Tracee (Mid Lachlan Landcare) at midlachlanlandcare@gmail.com or ph. 0417 799 425.

Here’s some of the wonderful iNaturalist pictures submitted through the project from around the Cowra/Canowindra area.