Citizen Science, Curiosity and Conservation with “iNaturalist” in Hong Kong
The sixth episode of our CitSciAsia Meets… interview series has been posted, with Dr. Roger Kendrick interviewed in Hong Kong by Smriti Safaya. With the City Nature Challenge coming up this month, Dr. Kendrick gives some behind-the-scenes insight into how iNaturalist is being used to catalogue moth biodiversity in Hong Kong. He also points to how temporal changes in this data can be used to study our warming planet and how every little contribution (even from those who wouldn’t call themselves citizen scientists or environmentalists) does count towards understanding the bigger picture.
As a young lad traipsing with his grandmother along the south coast cliffs of the UK, Dr. Kendrick started noticing the beauty of butterflies. As he nurtured his curiosity in lepidoptera and the natural world with studies in Conservation Management, he recognized a limitation with studying butterflies as there are only about 60 species in the UK with thousands of people keen to investigate them. His interest in its lesser appreciated cousins, moths, developed during a county mothing field session one night where in just 4 hours, they saw more than 150 moth species. “That was more than twice the number of all the UK butterfly species in one go! I was blown away!” exclaims Dr. Kendrick.
The mothing community in the UK also encouraged a spirit of contribution, no matter how small, which fueled his curiosity and tapped into the intrinsic motivation to help. Having found an arm of ecology and conservation needing further exploration, Dr. Kendrick came to Hong Kong for a project to create a baseline of moths biodiversity. The initial paucity of Hong Kong data and the fact that nearly half of the 450 species he observed could not be identified properly with the help of UK’s Natural History experts simply added fuel to the fire, and led Dr. Kendrick to complete a PhD dedicated to moths of Hong Kong.
“We probably have about 4000–4500 species of moths in Hong Kong, but we only know about 2500 of them,” he shares. What is even more remarkable is that he alone is responsible for identifying more than 50% of them in the last 25 years. Dr. Kendrick is excited about the growing local interest in lepidoptera and he predicts that every decade hundreds more new species will be observed.
Citizen science has a part to play in this field flourishing; iNaturalist records of butterflies and moths make up 30% of all the flora and fauna observations in Hong Kong! There is a committed community of experts and amateur moth-ers (people who are keen on observing and recording moths), who set up light traps in local forests and rooftops to learn about the local species, and share their expertise on social media.
Interestingly, climate change is having a visible impact as tropical moths from places like Borneo and Sumatra are moving north and have started to be recorded in Hong Kong since 2003. Those tropical moths are “like the canaries” for a warming planet, and the fact that the Hong Kong koel is singing its signature tune a month and a half earlier than usual signifies how species’ adaptations are manifested. The benefit of keeping regular records and making observations of even the most common species of animals means that people can study their response to the changing environment around them.
“The koel’s song is an easy sound to identify with confidence and that makes the data valuable. It is the common stuff that has the biomass and drives the ecosystem,” Dr. Kendrick says. Many residents fondly recognize the koel’s rising scale of whistles, and Dr. Kendrick highlights that sometimes we take familiarity for granted. “Ignoring the common species and focusing on the elusive ones is a misconception in biodiversity conservation and management. The more disconnected we are from valuing the ecological functions and economic contributions by species to our way of life, the greater the peril.” He drives home that idea with “No hawkmoths? No papayas”, as he points to a small papaya tree growing in his dense backyard garden of various flowers, herbs and plants. With theories about meta-population dynamics by Illka Hanski and the glaring realities described in John MacKinnon’s “Avenues of Futility in Conservation” in tow, Dr. Kendrick believes we can begin to appreciate the nature-human relationship when considering Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” overlaid by the food-web. “We can clearly map out the resources we need to live more sustainably”, he summarizes. “The big picture is important, and everyone contributing to observing and understanding the biodiversity around us is key. So get out there, enjoy and contribute!” he laughs, as he grabs his camera, sunglasses and heads into the hillside behind his house to do some iNaturalist observations in the fading light of the afternoon.
Citizen Science Month has now started, and if you are stuck at home but would like to get inspiration for when we finally can go back outside more freely again, we have new videos to cover (including an upcoming video with an article about iNaturalist user and science teacher, Darrell Sharp), so keep watching the channel to keep informed about what is happening in citizen science across our vast continent of Asia. With much of the world under social isolation orders and lockdowns because of COVID-19, competitive community gatherings for City Nature Challenge are no longer possible. As we mentioned in our last post on Citizen Science in a time of coronavirus all is not lost, and CNC 2020 will still be going ahead without the competitive aspects. Instead it will embrace the healing power of nature and encourage the collaborative aspect of the CNC.
