ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Six years ago a friend said to me, “You should join iNatauralist.” An online application that lets you observe and identify plants and animals and contribute data to a global database on biodiversity. The database is also an initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.

 

So, I joined the App, and since then, while traveling across the Kurdistan Region, I have observed and uploaded to the database more than 200 different species of plants and insects. My observations are of course only a tiny part of the half a million species that were added to the site by members of the iNaturalist community last year alone, which helped the initiative surpass 200 million identifications.

 

“What is really unique about iNaturalist is that we have the ability to census hundreds of thousands of species annually, censusing this huge portion of the tree of life,” said iNaturalist co-developer and staff Scott Loarie in a video message at the end of 2024. “And that really is because iNaturalist accepts data on plants, and insects where real biodiversity is.”

 

Its founders describe iNaturalist as “an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.”

 

This past December, just before the year’s end I received a message from the iNatualist administration, saying that last year 500,000 observations were made across the world, amounting to 24 percent of all the species on planet earth. 

 

“If one person would have done 1,000 observations every day, it would take 500 years to reach that,” Loarie said, adding that the 200 million observations made by its members represent 200,000 species which is one fourth of the species on the planet.

 

Some of my observations have been listed as Research Grade, meaning they meet the iNaturalist criteria of accuracy, precision, completeness, relevance, and appropriateness of an iNaturalist observation as biodiversity data.

“Observations that meet research-grade criteria are submitted to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, a pipeline of data that tracks over 100 thousand biodiversity datasets,” iNaturalist managers say. 

 

Many of the plants and insects I have listed on the database I had seen and observed as a child on our family farm in Halabja or elsewhere in the Kurdistan Region. But it is something else when you begin to identify them, learn about their characteristics, behavior and place of origin.

 

For instance, there is a type of locust that appears in wheatfields every summer around harvesting time. On our farm in Saban outside Halabja we used to call it Shera kula (lion locust) due to its size compared to other locusts and grasshoppers. On iNaturalist I found out that it is called Stout Magician (Saga ephippigera).

 

 

Southern Skimmer (Orthetrum brunneum) is a species of dragonfly that is present in much of Europe and as far as Mongolia and they live and breed alongside rivers, streams and swamps. I took photos of this skimmer on the edge of a stream west of Erbil. They are among the most vulnerable due to habitat destruction and pesticides.

 

 

The Kurdistan Region is certainly not without some venomous scorpions, such as the Arabian fat-tailed scorpion (Androctonus crassicauda) that can be found in North Africa and the Middle East. I recorded one in the vicinity of Erbil.

 

Among the creatures I have observed is a small frog endemic to the Middle East, which unfortunately, I found out, has been declared endangered. It is called Lemon-yellow tree frog and I came across one hanging on the new branches of a plant at a nursery on the Kirkuk-Erbil road.

 

 

The Long-eared Hedgehog (Hemiechinus auritus) is a nocturnal animal. When one dark summer night I saw one on a country road outside a village south of Erbil I thought it was a rat and was a little surprised by its slow movement. But upon close inspection and an online identification I found out it was a hedgehog native to the Middle East and Central Asia. An important insectivore member of the ecosystem, 70 percent of whose diet consists of insects, including worms, slugs, and snails.  

 

All the animal and plant species I have observed over the last six years are types that have long been identified and named by scientists and experts, among them centipedes, lizards, grasshoppers, thorns, thistles, bushes, and wild flowers. But their rediscovery gives you a sense of what species live and survive here and where the Kurdistan Region is on the world biodiversity map.