Challenge 45: Become an iNaturalist for Dartmoor

Points available: 4

About the challenge

The LookWild Project is all about spotting wildlife in the UK’s 15 National Parks and helping you to improve your wildlife skills. In turn, your observations will help us to better understand the wildlife in our National Parks and how we can look after it.

You need to download the iNaturalist app from your app store or use the iNaturalist website, make an account and then you’re ready to get spotting!

Sign up to the UK national parks LookWild project in the app and then all your observations will be logged.

Take a photo of any plant, animal or insect that you find interesting. You can record sounds too. Get close enough to get a good shot but be mindful not to disturb what you are photographing. Don’t worry if you do not know the name of it, the app will give suggestions of what it might be and help you identify it to family level.

Once you’ve submitted your record, the online community can make further suggestions to help improve your identification.

Helpful tips

Younger wildlife spotters can use the Seek app which has wildlife challenges for you to complete and doesn't require  an account.

If you are already good at identification you could help us improve the quality of the data recorded so it can be shared with the biological records centre. Contact us for more details.

More information

If you like doing this, organisations like Butterfly Conservation and the British Dragonfly Society have their own apps which record more information so you can take part in more specialist recording projects