iNaturalist is a global community-science platform that enables anyone to document and share observations of living organisms through photographs and georeferenced data. Over the past year, more than 30,000 biodiversity records have been contributed from across Belize, documenting hundreds of species, including many that are underrepresented in formal monitoring programs. These citizen-generated records complement formal research and can reveal new insights into species distributions, seasonality, and the biodiversity found in everyday landscapes such as farms, villages, and backyards.

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The Belize BackYaad Biodiversity project is a country-wide initiative led by the University of Belize Environmental Research Institute (UB-ERI) that invites people across Belize to engage with nature using iNaturalist. The project promotes public participation in biodiversity monitoring, raises national awareness of Belize’s natural heritage, and advances the use of community-science data to inform conservation and research.

 

Through this effort, citizens, students, researchers, and nature enthusiasts are encouraged to contribute geo-referenced observations of plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments nationwide. These observations build a growing national dataset that supports ecological research, species-distribution mapping, and long-term monitoring.

 

By making biodiversity science accessible and participatory, the project aims to foster a culture of observation and data sharing across Belize. The resulting records will strengthen national biodiversity information systems and support evidence-based conservation decision-making.