TED Talks Daily - The surprising power of your nature photos | Scott Loarie

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Scott Loarie has a challenge for you: go outside and take a picture of a living thing. He introduces the global community of people building a living atlas of the natural world by sharing their nature photos with scientists — and shows how you can join in on the fun.Want to help shape TED’s shows going forward? Fill out our survey!Become a TED Member today at ted.com/joinLearn more about TED Next at ted.com/futureyou Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. We are in an extinction crisis. By the end of the century, scientists believe that up to one-third of animal life on this planet could be gone. That's a huge problem for so many reasons. And according to biologist and entrepreneur Scott Lorry, we can help more than we know.

In his talk, he shares the power of citizen science and why we should all be taking out our phones and snapping a photo of that cool insect or bird we see way more for the sake of the earth. And stick around for a brief Q&A between Scott and Head of TED Chris Anderson after the talk. Summer's coming. Is your business ready? From hiring to inventory, iCapital helps Canadian small businesses move fast with flexible financing. We're not a broker. We're a direct

lender. Apply in under five minutes. Approval in 24 hours. Up to $250,000 in your account within 48 hours. No red tape, no delays. Just real support. Visit iCapital.ca today. This episode is sponsored by Google Pixel. I am always looking for tools that help me stay curious and efficient. And lately I've been exploring the Google Pixel 9, which was gifted to me by Google. What's impressed me most is how it's powered by Gemini. That's Google's personal AI assistant built right into my phone. Gemini helps me brainstorm ideas, summarize emails, even plan out my day, all just by holding the power button. For example, let me show you how easy it is.

Gemini summarized my unread emails. Re, away next week. Jonathan confirmed with Elise Hugh about rescheduling a meeting. Reminder, development committee meeting tomorrow at 12 p.m. Central Time. It's super helpful for staying on top of things without feeling overwhelmed. Or when I needed a quick dinner plan, I snapped a photo of what I had in my fridge and Gemini gave me recipe ideas. It's like having a research assistant right in my pocket. If you can think it, Gemini can help create it. Learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Support for this episode comes from Airbnb. Every time I travel to Vancouver for the TED conference, I think of extending the trip

by one more day to explore. Maybe visit Granville Island to check out their public market to browse the colorful food and produce, or try out one of their world-famous donuts or some fresh food. Maybe with my extra time I could check out the Grouse Grind hike on the Grouse Mountain nearby, which I've been told is Mother Nature's Stairmaster. This time around I might just do it. While I'm away, I've been thinking of hosting on Airbnb so my home doesn't just sit empty. It would put my home to good use, and the extra income would be great to cover some of the costs of my trip. One more night in this incredible city, one more inspiring TED

talk. It just feels like the smart thing to do. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca. I want to share what's possible when we notice nature. Let's start with this New Zealand moth from about a century ago. It's got this fantastic name. It's called the frosted Phoenix. It's also been called the Holy Grail of New Zealand moths. And it's been missing for about a century. The scientists thought that it was extinct. And then about a year ago, the frosted phoenix rose again. This picture was noticed by scientists

on a citizen science project that I helped lead. But the photographer wasn't a scientist. All right, he was a Swedish bird watcher. He's a school teacher. He likes birds, and he was down in New Zealand to look for kiwi birds. So kiwi are these amazing little nocturnal birds that walk around on beaches. You have to go out at night to see them. So he goes out at night to see kiwi birds.

He's actually walking back to his hotel. So he's walking up the stairs, and he notices this moth on his hotel balcony. So he takes a photo of it, he posts it, and goes to bed, not realizing that he just helped solve a century-old science mystery. So this is why this is important. I mean, the frosted phoenix isn't alone. It's one of over two million species like these

that we share the planet with. There's probably many more. It's probably more like 10 million. All right? With so many species, it's no wonder that the frosted phoenix just fell off the radar. I mean, we don't have enough scientists, we don't have enough professionals to keep track of all of these,

let alone manage them or protect them. The problem is, these species are really important. They form the foundations of our life support systems, and we're losing them. We're losing them faster and faster. In fact, scientists think that with habitat destruction and climate change, we're going to lose a third. That's one in three by the end of the century.

That's a really big problem. That's the extinction crisis. But this just isn't an extinction crisis, it's also an attention crisis. I mean, we're more disconnected from the natural world than ever before. If we're not noticing these species, if we're not noticing what's happening to them, that means we don't care about them.

And if we don't care, then why would we protect them? But here's the good news. We can keep track of, manage and protect all these species by engaging millions of everyday regular people. And through this participation, we can get people to start caring about nature again. We can start repairing this connection with the natural world. That's the power of citizen science.

So I've seen this firsthand with a citizen science project that I lead, which is called iNaturalist. So how does it work? So you go outside, you take a picture of any living thing, and first, the AI will identify it, but then you share it. You share it with a global community of scientists and naturalists, and they'll help vet it and turn it into scientific data.

So this is data that's used by scientists to track species, to understand how ecosystems are changing and even to describe new kinds of plants and animals. So iNaturalist started as a master's project at UC Berkeley, and over the last 15 years, I've helped it grow into one of the world's largest citizen science projects. So we now have millions of people around the world who are doing this, posting their photos, and this community has built this really amazing,

living, breathing atlas of the natural world. We now have hundreds of millions of observations, representing one in four of all species on the planet. And these are... Thanks. observations, representing one in four of all species on the planet. And these are... thanks. You know, these are data that are used by AI models, by land managers and by scientists in thousands of studies. But remember, each one of these observations is an encounter between a regular, everyday

person in the natural world. And some of them are really great. This is Glenda Walter. She's a retiree in Australia. And she was out on a walk, and she noticed this little mantis. She took a picture of it. It's an entirely new species of praying mantis.

So it's given the name Enimia gnat, which abbreviates to I gnat. I gnat is the nickname for iNaturalist, in honor of this kind of collaboration between regular, everyday people and scientists. We've seen hundreds of discoveries like this. So this is Abigail de Pozo. She's a student in Ecuador,

and she was actually on a class field trip, and she noticed this butterfly, posted a picture of it. It's a completely new species of butterfly. Just this February, Deb Manley was in Big Bend National Park in Texas, and she was on a hike, and she saw this little flower that she didn't recognize. So she took a photo of it, and again, it's a completely new species of plant,

and that's inside of a national park, inside of the United States. And even in super well-studied groups like birds, so this is Tom Verus, and he's a filmmaker. So he was in Papua New Guinea on a scouting trip. He saw this hawk up in the tree, so he takes a photograph of it, and it hasn't been seen for 55 years. But this is my favorite story.

This is Juan De Rue. He's a Colombian architect, and he was in this really remote cabin in the Andes. And all of a sudden, this weasel jumps into the cabin. It's running around inside the bathroom, knocking things over. So he grabs his camera, and he takes these pictures of the elusive Colombian weasel. So it starts out, this is an animal that the day before

was only known from skins inside of museums. And then this discovery gins up a bunch of attention on the media, science colliding with the natural world, you know, the modern world. But when you put all this together, we're getting for the first time a real-time look at how ecosystems are changing on a global scale. In California, the Department of Fish and Wildlife are using these data to build a marine health early warning system

to see how climate change is impacting marine protected areas up and down the coast. And this is all powered by regular people, not professional scientists. I mean, so many people think that science isn't for them. I can't be a scientist. I don't have a degree, I'm not an expert. But science isn't just for scientists. Everybody can participate.

But here's what interests me, is that taking photographs, noticing starfish and plants, it doesn't just change what we know about the natural world. It changes us. Because each one of these photographs and observations is this very personal act of curiosity and action and participation. It changes our relationship with nature. It doesn't just help science.

It helps us care about the nature that's in our lives. And I think that's the most important tool for conservation of all of this. In the early days of iNaturalist, I'm a scientist, so I was just really focused on scaling data. And I was thinking, if we can get more people involved, we can get more data, that's what we need. But what I didn't realize is when these communities, they're what's driving this,

and when they reach a certain scale, really interesting things start to happen. We're seeing people use iNaturalist in ways that we never imagined. We're seeing people use it to organize. So a BioBlitz is a community-led nature inventory where people come together in real life to inventory nature. These are the kind of engines for grassroots capacity building that we need to end the extinction crisis. And when people see that they're doing something that's bigger than themselves,

that's part of a global effort, that's when we believe that our actions really can make a difference. So the City Nature Challenge, it started out as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, saying, hey, let's hold bioblitzes on the same day in April. And then totally organically, it's grown into this annual event where thousands of groups across hundreds of cities

all conduct simultaneous bioblitzes. It's now the largest annual census of life on earth. But it's more than that. To me, this is a celebration that our actions really can make a difference. You know, it's think globally, act locally in action. Because at this local scale,

there really is this connection between noticing to actually stewarding and improving habitat. This is Heather Holm. She was leading efforts to monitor pollinators, bees and butterflies, in Minnesota. And she started noticing that these rusty patch bumblebees were declining. So she rallied her community to do something about it. So they are coming out to actually restore the habitats

that the bees depend on. So that's pulling out invasive buckthorn, planting wildflowers, attracting the bees. So it's going from noticing to actually stewarding and protecting. In California, Sally Gale, she couldn't bear noticing all these newts and frogs that were getting hit by cars as they crossed these data to design and build underpasses to help amphibians cross safely. And so, they're using this data to build underpasses to help amphibians cross safely.

And so, they're using this data to build underpasses to help amphibians cross safely. And so, they're using this data to build underpasses to help amphibians cross safely. And so, they're using this data to build underpasses to help amphibians cross safely. And so, they're using saving these newts and frogs one bucket at a time. And then they use these data to design and build underpasses to help amphibians cross safely.

I mean, Sally didn't wait for someone else to fix this. These kinds of solutions, they don't have to wait for our governments to wake up. Anybody can start these things, kick these off. I call this actionable hope. You know, we live in this age of just overwhelming environmental crisis, and it's so easy to just throw up your hands and say, there's nothing we can do about this.

But this is a path forward, not through passive despair, but through active participation. Our goal by 2030 is to try to get 100 million people connected to nature, to census most of the world's species and to inspire and network to get 100 million people connected to nature, to census most of the world's species and to inspire and network a million grassroots projects like these

to restore habitats for tens of thousands of species. The extinction crisis is too big for any one of us to solve alone, but if we all do our small part, we can solve this. So this is what I want you to do. The next time you're outside, just take a minute to realize that you're part of an ecosystem that we still know so little about and it needs your help. And then just notice something, like maybe it's a moth on your balcony. Maybe it's like a fern growing through a crack in the sidewalk.

And then take a photograph of it and share it. Share it with science. I mean, be a part of this responsibility we have to understand and protect the natural world. Because solving the extinction crisis, it isn't just for scientists, it's the shared human project. It's one you absolutely can contribute to. And it just starts with noticing nature. Thank you.

Thank you. I just... thank you. So great to have you here. Just give me your sense of your emotional landscape. You've seen, you know more than most people about what we're losing, you've seen all these inspiring on-the-ground stories. How many days do you wake up sort of sick to your stomach with despair and how many days helpful and how do you manage that roller coaster? Yeah, it's really tough and I think that's one of the things that is hard when you're an environmentalist is all these challenges are these

hockey stick curves. It's like CO2 extinction, everything's going up. And it's hard to find solutions that have the potential to do that. And that's what I think is so inspiring about the TED community is we sort of still have this solving problems, but we're actually embracing new ideas, new thinking that can do that. And that's what keeps me going.

Because if we're just watching the world burn, it's really hard to get out of bed. Thank you for your inspiration. That's phenomenal. That was Scott Laurie at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curationguidelines. And that's it for today's show.

TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faisy-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balorizo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

Thanks for listening. This episode is sponsored by Google Pixel. I am always looking for tools that help me stay curious and efficient, and lately I've been exploring the Google Pixel 9, which was gifted to me by Google. What's impressed me most is how it's powered by Gemini. That's Google's personal AI assistant, built right into my phone. Gemini helps me brainstorm ideas, summarize emails, even plan out my day. All just by holding the power button. For example, let me show you how easy it is. Gemini summarized my unread emails. Re, away next week.

Jonathan confirmed with Elise Hue about rescheduling a meeting. Reminder, development committee meeting tomorrow at 12 p.m. Central time. It's super helpful for staying on top of things without feeling overwhelmed. Or when I needed a quick dinner plan, I snapped a photo of what I had in my fridge and Gemini gave me recipe ideas.

It's like having a research assistant right in my pocket. If you can think it, Gemini can help create it. Learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Did you know that socks are one of the most requested clothing items by organizations addressing homelessness? It's true. And it's also why we started Bombas. Every time you buy, well, anything from Bombas,

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