InvestigationThere are 136,000 anonymous people who regularly scan all over France for the wildlife on their land or balcony. Their data feed into the studies of researchers. Participatory sciences that transform these budding naturalists into active ecologists.
They were bad at math but take pleasure in counting. The biology lessons knocked them out, and here they are, scrutinizing glowworms, hedgehogs, seahorses or water lilies to inform researchers. On all fours in the earth, eyes riveted through binoculars, under the dodger, in the water, for a few minutes or hours, every week, 136,000 French people observe the flora and fauna as naturalists they are not. not. That is seven times more than ten years ago.
Without any initial skills, they participate in one of 165 participatory science programs that inventory and study endangered biodiversity. Programs (listed on the Open site, for Participatory Observatories of Species and Nature) increasingly numerous, attracting more and more participants. Their principle? A research institution (often the National Museum of Natural History-MNHN) collaborates with an association (League for the protection of birds – LPO, Opie, Noe, Tela Botanica, FNE, Planète mer, etc.) to collect and then use a quantity of data on one species, provided by volunteers all over France.
“ Transform your garden, your balcony or your terrace into a scientific laboratory by installing two feeders and by following in real time the comings and goings of the birds that come to feed there. It is not necessary to know how to recognize species! “, thus promises the BirdLab site (MNHN, LPO). A fun application and a training quiz transform any novice into an ornithologist, certainly on Sundays, but able to transmit information that the online community of observers, then experts, will validate.
Open the eye
Long before the era of apps, in 1850, the Museum was already providing booklets to travelers from the colonies to encourage them to keep their eyes open and bring back samples. The contemporary version of the involvement of amateurs in the natural sciences, under the name of “participatory sciences”, dates back to 1989 at the Museum, with the temporal monitoring of common birds (STOC) program, inspired by American weekends and English of birdwatch, the bird counting. But it was the Garden Bird Observatory (with the LPO) that, from 2012, popularized the practice, while digital tools and environmental anxiety spread. “With, at the level of society, an awareness of the stake of biodiversity conservation, and a demand for tools to preserve it”, notes Anne Dozières, director of the Museum’s fifteen participatory programs.
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