For 25 years Journey North has been using “citizen science” to understand, preserve, and protect nature, especially migratory species.
Anyone from newbies to scientists can participate, and many schools do. All you have to do is watch for certain migratory species of animals, including the monarch butterfly, the gray whale, the hummingbird, and the bald eagle, and snap pictures of them.
Upload your pictures, along with your location and any comments, to the Journey North website. The program staff processes the data from citizen scientists (that’s you!) in real time, and shares it back in the form of interactive maps, which the public can access to watch the migratory progress of a variety of species in real time.
The Journey North community racks up more than 50K sightings per year, including seasonal changes related to plants, like where and when tulips are blooming.
Journey North was founded by Elizabeth Howard and has been supported by the Annenberg Foundation. It has recently transferred over to the Arboretum at the University of Wisconsin and is asking for public donations of money (as well as data) to keep it going.
Got questions? Ask Nancy Sheehan, Journey North Program Coordinator, nsheehan@wisc.edu.
