The ‘Out’ Crowd
At a Burlington nature celebration, citizen scientists connect with — and count — the city’s nonhuman residents B Y R A CHEL MUL L IS
RACHEL MULLIS
THERE ARE ACTUALLY A LOT OF INTERESTING THINGS THAT CAN BE OBSERVED JUST WALKING UP AND DOWN THE STREET. TO M NO R TO N COURTESY OF TOM NORTON
SEVEN DAYS APRIL 24-MAY 1, 2024
COURTESY OF JOSHUA BROWN
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A leopard frog at Derway Island in Burlington
Zoe Richards
COURTESY OF JOSHUA BROWN
Vera Szumowski isn’t afraid of snakes. On a sunny April day, she found a nest of the harmless garter variety seeking warmth by the old well at Burlington’s Ethan Allen Homestead. The 6-year-old, who was visiting the park with her mom, held a writhing black serpent in each hand as if she had been doing it her whole life. Children are often drawn to critters and plants, according to Zoe Richard, who cofounded and now leads Burlington Wildways, which links the urban park with a larger system of nature trails and open spaces around the Queen City. Adults may lose that interest, but those who manage to maintain their direct connections to the natural world reap many benefits, Richards said. Studies show that observing nature doesn’t just improve individual health and well-being — it also helps the planet. Enter the fourth annual Greater Burlington Area City Nature Celebration, where local citizen scientists of all levels — from kids like Szumowski to pros — can rediscover the magic of observing their natural surroundings. The free festivities are coordinated by Burlington Wildways, a partnership of Burlington Parks, Recreation & Waterfront; Winooski Valley Park District; Rock Point; and the Intervale Center that aims to protect the city’s wild spaces. Running now through Monday, April 29, this year’s celebration features a nature storytelling night at Railyard Apothecary, guided nature walks, speeches by local nature experts, and a full roster of handson activities and foraged-food tastings at the Intervale Center. (Where else can you try Japanese knotweed ice cream?) But the festival’s centerpiece is the Greater Burlington Area City Nature Challenge bioblitz — a community biological census. Participants will scour the Queen City for flora and fauna, catalog it with their phone cameras, and upload their findings to the iNaturalist app. Their observations will fuel scientific research on animal and plant behaviors that are shifting rapidly in reaction to climate change and habitat loss. The original City Nature Challenge, conceived of in 2016 as a friendly competition between science museums in San Francisco and Los Angeles, has grown to include more than 700 cities worldwide. Burlington joined in 2021, incorporating additional programming for those who
Common baskettail
aren’t inclined or able to participate in the challenge format. The Burlington-area bioblitz has grown dramatically since. In 2022, participants recorded more than 3,000 total observations and identified 570 individual species. Last year, total observations more than doubled, and citizen scientists identified nearly 1,000 species — far more than local scientists could capture on their own. “It’s this crowdsourced way of getting all this biological data that used to be just grueling,” Richards said. “Especially insects — insects are incredibly unknown.” Bioblitzes such as the City Nature Challenge help inform nature-based solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss. Those solutions include everything from environmental justice initiatives to habitat restoration to policy reform, said Amy Seidl, a senior lecturer and codirector of the environmental studies program at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and a past City Nature Challenge keynote speaker. “There’s some really good evidence that … being involved in community science actually predisposes people to sustainability behavior,” Seidl said. As an example, she pointed to a bill passed in March by the Vermont House of Representatives to ban neonicotinoids, a class of synthetic pesticides that is wreaking havoc on honeybees and native bee species. “To have a group of people get together and look for native bees in the Intervale and in urban environments is a really important agenda to further support [that] legislative work,” she said. “People start to develop this affinity and relationship to the pollinators they’re seeing.” The bioblitz is open to anyone with a smartphone, and observations can be recorded in seconds. Just download the iNaturalist app and snap pictures of whatever captures your interest, be it beetle, wildflower or animal track. You can take photos in the app or upload them, and the app will crowdsource identifications with a little help from expert naturalists and scientists. Participants can join the Greater Burlington Area City Nature Challenge iNaturalist project page, but they don’t have to — Richards said any observations uploaded during the challenge period will be added to the project automatically.