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Connecting with the Outdoors by learning and using iNaturalist while protecting vulnerable communities

Latino Outdoors members

Connecting with the Outdoors by learning and using iNaturalist while protecting vulnerable communities

Jennifer Adams, Bryan Rodriguez and Esmeralda Cabrera, Latino Outdoors
 
We inspire, connect, and engage Latino communities in the outdoors and embrace cultura y familia as part of the outdoor narrative, ensuring our history, heritage, and leadership are valued and represented. In these challenging times, members of Latino Outdoors nationwide (LO) found ways to recreate responsibly in the outdoors while building and maintaining a sense of community virtually. In this talk, three Bay Area locals and LO San Francisco Bay Area chapter leaders, Jennifer Adams, Bryan Rodriguez and Esmeralda Cabrera will share their experiences on how they recreated responsibly during the pandemic and how they used apps like iNaturalist to stay connected to the environment and the LO community during  shelter-in-place . Join us for a fun and dynamic session on the benefits of using apps like iNaturalist and how you can participate in a new and exciting biodiversity monitoring project with LO! For more information about Latino Outdoors visit their website: https://latinooutdoors.org/
More about our invited speakers:
Jennifer Adams is Latino Outdoors Regional Coordinator for the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a Bay Area native and is passionate about connecting nuestra gente to the outdoors and learning together as a community. She was introduced to iNaturalist while getting certified as a UC California Naturalist, and saw an opportunity to share the app with her community. She has a love and appreciation for the environment and building people's curiosity.

Bryan Rodriguez is a Program Coordinator for the South Bay Area with Latino Outdoors. He is passionate about exploring the outdoors and helping others in his community feel comfortable going outdoors. Having studied engineering, he is naturally curious and strives to learn as much as he can from his fellow Latino Outdoors leaders and volunteers. iNaturalist and Seek hold a special place in his heart since it helps facilitate learning about and teaching new plant and animal species.

Esmeralda (Esme) Cabrera has been a volunteer and outings leader with Latino Outdoors for a little over 2 years. In that capacity, she has learned that some of the most powerful connections and willingness to defend it come from experiencing the outdoors as a family, whether it’s the one you’re born with or your chosen family. LO outings feel like a family with whom you can gently explore local trails, challenge the body with new experiences, or share historical knowledge to ground us in the present. We enjoy the outdoors and each other today to protect what we love for our future.

Tony Iwane, iNaturalist Staff. I'm Tony, and I'm iNaturalist's Outreach and Community Coordinator, which means I'm also in charge of our Observation of the Day and Observation of the Week posts! If you come across a cool observation you think should be featured, please message me; @ mentions are too easily lost in the shuffle so I won't respond to those for Observation of the Day. I was born and raised in Hawaii, reside in Oakland, California, and am an interpretive naturalist with the California Center for Natural History. I'm into photography and do some video on the side, including most of iNat's videos. I also occasionally write for Bay Nature magazine and was interviewed for the Nature's Archive podcast.

 

Video available here

Connecting with the Outdoors by learning and using iNaturalist while protecting vulnerable communities