The surprising power of your nature photos | Scott Loarie
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We are in an extinction crisis. By the end of the century, scientists believe that up to one-third of animal life on this planet could be gone. That's a huge problem for so many reasons. And according to biologist and entrepreneur Scott Laurie, we can help more than we know. In his talk, he shares the power of citizen science and why we should all be taking out our phones and snapping a photo of that cool insect or bird we see way more for the sake of the earth. And stick around for a brief Q&A between Scott and head of TED, Chris Anderson, after the talk.
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I want to share what's possible when we notice nature. Let's start with this New Zealand moth from about a century ago. It's got this fantastic name. It's called the frosted phoenix. It's also been called the holy grail of New Zealand moths, and it's been missing for about a century. The scientists thought that it was extinct. And then about a year ago, the frosted phoenix rose again. This picture was noticed by scientists on a citizen science project that I helped lead. But the photographer wasn't a scientist. He was a Swedish birdwatcher. He's a schoolteacher, he likes birds, and he was down in New Zealand to look for kiwi birds. So kiwi are these amazing little nocturnal birds that walk around on beaches.
You have to go out at night to see them. So he goes out at night to see kiwi birds. He's actually walking back to his hotel. So he's walking up the stairs, and he notices this moth on his hotel balcony. So he takes a photo of it, he posts it and goes to bed, not realizing that he just helped solve a century-old science mystery. So this is why this is important. I mean, the frosted phoenix isn't alone. It's one of over two million species like these that we share the planet with. There's probably many more. It's probably more like 10 million. All right? With so many species, it's no wonder that the frosted phoenix just fell off the radar. I mean, we don't have enough scientists. We don't have enough professionals to keep track of all of these, let alone manage them or protect them.
The problem is these species are really important. They form the foundations of our life support systems, and we're losing them. We're losing them faster and faster. In fact, scientists think that with habitat destruction and climate change, we're going to lose a third. That's one in three by the end of the century. That's a really big problem. That's the extinction crisis. But this just isn't an extinction crisis, it's also an attention crisis. I mean, we're more disconnected from the natural world than ever before. If we're not noticing these species, if we're not noticing what's happening to them, that means we don't care about them. And if we don't care, then why would we protect them? But here's the good news.
we can keep track of, manage and protect all of these species by engaging millions of everyday regular people. And through this participation, we can get people to start caring about nature again. We can start repairing this connection with the natural world. That's the power of citizen science. So I've seen this firsthand with a citizen science project that I lead, which is called iNaturalist. So how does it work? So you go outside, you take a picture of any living thing, and first the AI will identify it, but then you share it. You share it with a global community of scientists and naturalists, and they'll help vet it and turn it into scientific data. So this is data that's used by scientists to track species, to understand how ecosystems are changing, and even to describe new kinds of plants and animals.
So iNaturalist started as a master's project at UC Berkeley, and over the last 15 years, I've helped it grow into one of the world's largest citizen science projects.
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