Many lessons have come from this past year. An important one is how crucial fresh air and being in nature are to our health and well-being.
This spring, the Boundary Bay Park Association, along with several other Metro Vancouver Parks’ Associations, partnered with Pacific Parklands Foundation to bring the public an exciting opportunity to get outside and build their nature knowledge.
The Snap & Share project ran from May 15 to June 13 throughout Metro Vancouver’s regional parks and greenways. The goal of the project was to encourage people to connect with, share and discover nature simply by snapping a photo. The project used a free online social networking platform called iNaturalist, which allowed participants to join a global community of citizen scientists.
The statistics from the Snap & Share event proved how successful this project was.
During the four weeks of data collection, there were 6,242 observations made by 344 observers, with 1,035 species identified.
Species categories included fungi, plants, mollusks, arachnids, insects, ray-finned (bony) fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and others. The most common bird species identified was the song sparrow and the most common plant species observed was salmonberry. For Boundary Bay Regional Park, there was a 24 per cent increase in species observed and 43 new observers.
In addition to increased data collection within Metro Vancouver regional parks, the project showcased incredible photography skills by some of the participants.
The Boundary Bay Park Association is a proud partner of this project. We are grateful to have beautiful Boundary Bay Regional Park available for people to get outside and enjoy nature and participate in valuable initiatives such as the Snap & Share project.
To learn more about this project visit: https://www.pacificparklands.com/regional-parks-snap-share/.
To learn more about or to volunteer with the Boundary Bay Park Association contact: [email protected].
Editor’s note: Nature Notes is a new column in the Optimist prepared by the Delta Naturalists Society and their community partners.
