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Hi there.
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I'm in the habit of saying
I would like it if butterflies could talk,
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but I've been recently reconsidering that,
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because we already have
a pretty loud world.
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Can you imagine if butterflies
were yakking out there all over the place?
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But I would like to ask butterflies
one question, which is,
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what is the meaning of some of the stories
that we humans tell about them?
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Because remarkably, all over the world,
cultures have really similar stories,
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similar mythologies about butterflies
having to do with the human soul.
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Some cultures tell us butterflies
are carrying the souls of children
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who have died wrongly or too soon,
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and other cultures
tell us that butterflies
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are carrying the souls
of our ancestors among us.
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This butterfly is called
a Kallima inachus.
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On one side it looks
like a beautiful butterfly,
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and on the other side
it looks like a leaf,
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and it folds up like a leaf
to elude predators.
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So now you see it, now you don't,
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something hidden, something revealed.
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Maybe we got our ideas about
the human soul from this butterfly.
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So it's possible that butterflies
have some sort of outsized role
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in our afterlife.
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But in this life, in this world,
butterflies are in really serious trouble.
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This is a moth.
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Moths and butterflies are related.
Moths generally fly at night.
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This is called Predicta, because
Darwin predicted that it must exist.
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So today, more than 60 species
of butterflies are endangered
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around the world,
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but even more than that,
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insects are declining,
declining, declining.
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In the last 50 years, we've lost
nearly 50 percent
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of the total number of bodies of insects.
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Now this is a disaster.
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It could impact us in a more serious way
more quickly than climate change,
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because butterflies don't do that much
in the ecosystem that we depend on,
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but they do things for other creatures
that we do depend on,
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and that's the same story
with all insect life.
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Insect life is at the very foundation
of our life support systems.
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We can't lose these insects.
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Biodiversity all over the globe
is in a vast decline.
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Habitat lost, pesticides, herbicides,
and impacts of climate change.
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Habitat loss is very serious,
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and that's where we really
have to get developing better,
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more mindfully.
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It's the worst of times.
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We are kind of overloaded
with our problems.
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It's also the best of times.
There's incredibly good news.
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We have exactly what we need.
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We have exactly the platform
to save nature.
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It's called citizen science.
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So citizen science is generally a term
used to mean people without a PhD
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contributing to scientific research.
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Sometimes it's called community science,
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which gets at the communal purpose
of citizen science,
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which is to do something
for our commons together.
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It's amateur science.
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It's being turbocharged today
by vast computing power,
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statistical analysis, and the smartphone,
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but it's an ancient practice
that people have always practiced.
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It's amateur science.
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Professional science has its roots
in amateur science.
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Charles Darwin was a citizen scientist.
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He had no advanced degree
and he worked only for himself.
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So someone showed Darwin
this Madagascar star orchid,
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which as a spur that's 12 inches long,
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and the spur is the part of a flower
that the nectar is in.
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So this person showed this
to Darwin and said,
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"This proves that evolution
does not come about in a natural way.
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This flower proves that only God
can make these incredibly bizarre
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and tricky-looking creatures on the earth,
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because no insect
could possibly pollinate this.
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God must reproduce it."
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And Darwin said, "No, I'm sure
that there is an insect somewhere
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with a proboscis long enough
to pollinate that star orchid."
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And he was right.
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This is a map of the monarch butterfly.
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So, the monarch butterfly
has a different story
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than that particular moth,
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but reflects the same kind
of fundamental idea that Darwin had
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called coevolution,
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and coevolution is at the heart
of how nature works,
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and it's also at the heart
of what's going wrong with nature today.
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So over time, as the moth
developed a longer proboscis,
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so the plant developed a longer spur.
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Over millions of years,
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the plant and the moth
developed a relationship
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whereby they both make each other's
chances of existence better.
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The monarch butterfly has a different kind
of coevolutionary relationship,
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and today it is at the heart of what's
going wrong for the monarch butterfly.
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So this is a map of
the monarch butterfly migration.
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The monarch does this amazing thing,
and over the course of a year,
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it goes over the entirety
of North America.
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It does this in four or five generations.
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The first generations
only live a couple of weeks.
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They mate, they lay eggs, and they die.
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The next generation emerges as butterflies
and takes the next leg of the journey.
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Nobody knows how they do it.
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By the time the fifth generation comes
back around -- and that one lives longer,
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they overwinter
in Mexico and California --
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by the time it gets there,
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those butterflies are going back
to where their ancestors came from,
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but they've never been there before,
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and nobody that they're immediately
related to has been there before either.
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We don't know how they do it.
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The reason we know they do
this kind of migration,
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and we still have a lot
of unanswered questions
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about the monarch migration,
is because of citizen science.
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So for decades people
have made observations
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about monarch butterflies
where and when they see them,
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and they've contributed these observations
to platforms like Journey North.
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This is a map of some observations
of butterflies made and given
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to Journey North.
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And if you can see the dots
are coded by what time of year
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those observations were made.
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So these massive amounts of data
come into a place like Journey North,
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and they can create a map
of this time of over a course of a year
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of where monarchs go.
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Also because of citizen science,
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we understand that monarch butterfly
numbers are going down, down, down.
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So in the 1980s, the overwintering
butterflies here in California,
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there were four million counted.
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Last year, 30,000. (Gasps)
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Four million to 30,000 since the 1980s.
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The monarchs on the east coast
are doing a little bit better,
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but they're also going down.
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OK, so what are we going to do about it?
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Well, very organically, nobody
really asking anybody to do it,
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people all over the continent
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are supporting monarch butterflies.
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The heart of the problem
for monarchs is milkweed.
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It's another coevolutionary relationship,
and here's the story.
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Milkweed is toxic.
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It has a poison in it that it evolved
to deter other insects from eating it,
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but the monarch developed
a different kind of relationship,
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a different strategy with the milkweed.
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Not only does it tolerate the toxin,
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the monarch actually sequesters
the toxin in its body,
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thus becoming poisonous to its predators.
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Monarch butterflies will only
lay their eggs on milkweed,
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and monarch caterpillars
will only eat milkweed,
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because they need that toxin to actually
create what they are as a species.
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So people are planting milkweed
all over the country
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where we have lost milkweed
due to habitat destruction,
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pesticide use, herbicide use
and climate change impacts.
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You can create a lot of butterfly habitat
and pollinator habitat on a windowsill.
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Go to a native nursery in your area
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and find out what's native
to where you live,
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and you will bring
beautiful things to yourself.
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Now, citizen science can do even more
than rescue monarch butterflies.
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It has the capacity to scale
to the level necessary
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that we need to mobilize the save nature.
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And this is an example.
It's called City Nature Challenge,
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and City Nature Challenge is a project
of the California Academy of Sciences
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and the Los Angeles
Museum of Natural History.
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So for four years, City Nature Challenge
has enjoined cities all over the globe
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to participate in counting up
biodiversity in their cities.
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We're up to, like, a million observations
of biodiversity collected by people
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around the globe this past April.
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The winner this year was South Africa,
much to the chagrin of San Francisco.
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(Laughter)
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They have more biodiversity than we do.
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It's kind of an interesting thing,
what is revealed when you start seeing
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what are the natural resources
where you live,
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because as we go forward, you want to live
where there's more biodiversity.
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And by the way, citizen science
is a very good tool for social justice
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and environmental justice goals,
for helping reach them.
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You need to have data
and you need to show a picture,
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you need to point to a cause,
and then you need to have
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the surgical strike to help support
whatever that problem is.
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So City Nature Challenge I think
should get a commendation from the UN.
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Has there ever been a global effort
on behalf of nature
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undertaken in this coordinated manner?
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It's amazing, it's fantastic,
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and it's really a pretty grassroots thing,
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and we get very interesting information
about butterflies and other creatures
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when we do these bio blitzes.
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City Nature Challenge basically works
with a tool called iNaturalist,
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and iNaturalist is your entry drug
to citizen science.
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I suggest signing up for it
on a laptop or on a desktop,
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and then you put the app on your phone.
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With iNaturalist, you take a picture
of a bird, a bug, a snake, anything,
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and an artificial intelligence function
and an expert vetting system
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works to verify that observation.
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The app gives the observation, the date,
the time, the latitude and the longitude,
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geolocates that observation.
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That's the data. That's the science
of citizen science.
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And then that data is shared,
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and that sharing, that is the soul
of citizen science.
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When we share data,
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we can see much bigger pictures
of what's going on.
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There's no way to see
that whole monarch migration
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without sharing data
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that's been collected over decades,
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seeing the heart and soul
of how nature works
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through citizen science.
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This is a Xerces blue butterfly,
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which went extinct when it lost
its habitat in Golden Gate Park.
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It had a coevolutionary relationship
with an ant, and that's another story.
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(Laughter)
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I'll end by asking you,
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please participate in citizen science
in some way, shape or form.
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It is an amazingly positive thing.
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It takes an army of people
to make it really work.
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And I'll just add that I think butterflies
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probably really do have
enough on their plate
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without carrying around human souls.
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(Laughter)
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But there's a lot we don't know, right?
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And what about all those stories?
What are those stories telling us?
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Maybe we co-evolved our souls
with butterflies?
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Certainly, we are connected to butterflies
in deeper ways than we currently know,
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and the mystery of the butterfly
will never be revealed
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if we don't save them.
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So, please join me
in helping to save nature now.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)