A multi-year collaboration between the US Forest Service (specifically, the Pacific Southwest Research Station and Region 5 Ecology Program) and the Academy to study how prescribed, or intentional, fires can build a forest’s resistance to the ravages of wildfire—and even benefit biodiversity.

Community scientists' collective observations of plants and animals, wherever they're found, are beginning to creating an important global record: what biodiversity is found where, how healthy populations are, and what's changing in the environment. By crowdsourcing this kind of data collection and analysis, the community science movement helps science to answer some of the biggest questions we face today.

California Academy scientists, in collaboration with the Presidio Trust and other stakeholders, are trying to bring back a local butterfly driven to extinction in the 1930s. The butterfly's role in San Francisco's dune habitat is vital to keeping that ecosystem healthy and resilient. The lessons we learn from this project in our backyard could provide information for regenerating other ecosystems across California and beyond.

Islands 2030 is a major new Academy initiative that aims to halt biodiversity loss and habitat degradation on five key tropical island archipelagos by 2030 while empowering and benefiting local communities.

Identified on the community science platform iNaturalist, the species add to California’s rich biodiversity.