Documenting Backyard Biodiversity
Teaching citizen science skills with the Manning Valley community with iNaturalist
Capacity building - LEP23_026_LLC
The issue
The Manning Valley Neighbourhood Centre (MVNS) hosts regular topical workshops each week within their community garden space bringing community together. The garden has been a longstanding institution for the Wingham community and mainly focuses on vegetable gardening, however there is an increase of many of their volunteers wanting to understand the species occurring within their garden space and around their community. Meanwhile, Wingham and the Manning Valley in general host a variety of rare native flora and fauna species making it common for sightings by community as but there is significantly low citizen science data to back these up in various local areas.
The solution
To bridge this knowledge gap, Landcare partnered with the Manning Valley Neighbourhood Centre to deliver a "Backyard Biodiversity" workshop. We focused on educating community groups about the rich wilderness on their doorstep and taught them how to document local wildlife. Participants learned to use the iNaturalist app to record everything from backyard plants to elusive native mammals. By training locals to map species in their own backyards and beyond, we started building a vital, community-driven database. This empowers residents to collect the real-time ecological data needed to protect the region's unique biodiversity.
The impact
The workshop empowered 8 enthusiastic participants to become active citizen scientists, fostering a deep sense of environmental agency and community ownership. By mastering the iNaturalist app alongside traditional identification guides, volunteers learned to seamlessly contribute meaningful biodiversity data without demanding physical labor. This newfound knowledge connects their backyard observations directly to broader conservation efforts and government database collection. Equipped to document everything from common weeds to threatened local species, these empowered residents are now vital guardians of the Manning Valley's unique wilderness, capable of utilising data to actively protect the forests they value.