Mid Canterbury has a wealth of rare flora and fauna, but only so much of it is recorded. Now conservationists are working with everyday people to carry out citizen science projects.

Have you ever spotted a tarantula-looking spider in New Zealand? Or a prickly slug near a rockpool? Maybe a plant that shouldn’t be in your garden?

Next time you do, take a photo. You might have discovered a new species.

New Zealand is home to about 80,000 recorded plants, fungi and animals, according to the Ministry for the Environment. But with so much ground to cover, from our rocky shores to our snowy mountains, new stuff is getting discovered all the time.

That’s why conservationists are calling on the people of Mid Canterbury to play citizen scientist and record the world around them.

Alice Shanks is a member of the QEII Trust, an organisation that helps farmers set aside land for native restoration, and she loves plants.

"I take photos of everything,’’ she said.

"I’ve got a record of what’s in my garden, and what’s at my bach, and a conservation project I’m involved in.”

Shanks used to take photos out of her own curiosity, but they’d sit on her computer taking up storage space.

And then she found iNaturalist or, as she calls it: Facebook for nerds, which is an international site that functions like social media.

People snap photos of plants or animals on their phone, upload them to iNaturalist for other people to work out what they are.

"Your phone gives you a date, a location, and takes the photo,’’ she said.

"So, you’ve automatically got those three key pieces of information.

"There are moderators, who take out the silly stuff like people posting their grandmas, and make sure there are good records.”

Thousands upload to the site, with over 56,000 observers registered in New Zealand.

Real scientists and researchers take data from iNaturalist and use it for studies to make informed real-life solutions for environmental issues.

"So, me doing my little nature diary in my own small way, can contribute to these big datasets.’’

And Alice has over 7500 observations on iNaturalist, which means she’s uploaded 7500 photos to the site.

She said those were rookie numbers, especially compared to Dr Jon Sullivan, a senior lecturer at Lincoln University, who has over 40,000 observations.

He’s been recording them since 2003 and before iNaturalist was a thing.

"Every day, when I bike to work, I count all the birds, the butterflies, the roadkill and the weeds,” Sullivan said.

Years of recording the same stretch of road have revealed some changes, with increases in temperatures and invasive species.

Sullivan said farmland areas like Mid Canterbury were somewhat of a mystery to iNaturalist users.

"Cities and towns, national parks and such, are generally well observed because there are lots of people in those areas.

"There are areas of the Canterbury Plains where, well, there are farms, but the density of people is relatively low.”

But what would there be to take photos of?

"There’s heaps out there.”

He said things as common as grass and livestock would paint an important picture of the environment.

"Plus from a farming point people can go, ‘what’s that new weed on my property?,’ and identify it with iNaturalist.

"If you’re looking at something you haven’t seen before you could well be the first person in the community to have seen it, and it could be a new native that’s come into your area.”

Shanks said capturing a picture of Ashburton’s environment today was as important as any other area in the country.

"Even what’s on the roadside may change in 50 years.

"We need more people getting out there and recording all the ordinary weeds in their garden.

"What’s on the roadside? What’s on the eroding beaches in Ashburton? That might be a record that won't be there for the future.”

New Zealand is also home to a basketful of citizen science projects. There’s the Kea database, Marine Metre’s shore surveys, NIWA’s flood photo viewer and even a mosquito census that Te Papa runs.

Projects can range from photo observations to sending frozen bugs in the mail, but they all depend on the everyday person for data.

Some more specific projects use local knowledge to better study the environment, like the New Zealand tahr survey run by Italian researchers and a Kiwi.

Researchers wanted to understand how prevalent the pink eye disease was amongst tahr and chamois, but instead of sending out scientists, they put out a call to hunters.

Large animal vet Francesco Formisano, a member of the research team, said local hunters ticked a lot of boxes.

"Hunters are already informed by themselves. They know the land. They know the animal they are looking for.

"That was the best way to cover a big scale in a short period of time.”

The survey asked hunters to photograph infected animals and detail information about each animal in a form.

Over the 17-month study, images of 79 of tahr and 26 chamois were sent to the research team.

"We found that all the data together was actually pretty significant, and we could start understanding the distribution of the disease.”

It was such a success that Formisano said a second survey was being considered.

As a hunter himself, he said New Zealand hunters knew how to navigate the Southern Alps safely, so didn’t need to be trained, and were keen to keep their game populations free of disease.

"The hunters, they care for the health of the animals. They don’t want sick animals on the mountains.

"We also thought this project could train better hunters in the future.”

Importantly, locals know their backyard best, Formisano said.

"That’s why citizen science projects are really valuable.”

While Formisano’s study utilised the skills of hunters, not all citizen science projects required great ability or experience.

Forest and Bird Ashburton’s Edith Smith said there were a number of volunteer projects in place around the town.

Setting traps for pests and counting birds for surveys were just some of the ways locals have gotten involved in recording Mid Cantabrian history.

"When you think about people science, it’s people like me just looking at the birds and seeing what’s happening,” Smith said.

By Anisha Satya