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Scott Loarie        

Executive Director & Co-Developer of iNaturalist; Global Conservation Advocate; Heinz Award for the Environment Winner

Scott Loarie is executive director and co-developer (with Ken-ichi Ueda) of iNaturalist, a nonprofit that connects people with nature to drive global conservation. In 2024, Loarie received the prestigious Heinz Award for the Environment.

Loarie’s love for nature began during his childhood on the Russian River in rural Northern California, where exploring the outdoors sparked a lifelong fascination with biodiversity. That passion led him to earn degrees in biology from Stanford University and a PhD in environmental science from Duke University. As a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, Loarie studied how climate change is reshaping ecosystems worldwide, from banding birds in Central America to tracking elephants with GPS collars across Africa.

In 2011, Loarie’s growing fascination with the power of technology to scale and decentralize solutions inspired him to leave academia and build iNaturalist — a platform that not only inspires curiosity and discovery but also fuels scientific breakthroughs and conservation action.

INaturalist stands on the premise that every observation can contribute to biodiversity science, from the rarest butterfly to the most common backyard weed. The company shares users' findings with scientific data repositories, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, to help scientists find and use data.

News


Environmentalists empowering women and citizen science win 2024 Heinz Awards
The other two recipients are Scott Loarie and Ken-ichi Ueda, founders of iNaturalist. The popular citizen-science platform has enabled millions of people globally to share more than 200 million plant and animal observations. The observations have contributed to the identification of dozens of new species, rediscovery of species not seen for a long time, and improved understanding of species ranges in response to climate change. In all, users of iNaturalist have logged nearly a quarter of all named species on Earth, according to the Heinz Family Foundation.
Marin naturalist tech startup honored with Heinz Family Foundation award
The Heinz Family Foundation named Scott Loarie and Ken-ichi Ueda as recipients of its coveted 29th annual Heinz Award for the Environment, respectively honoring the executive director and software engineer of iNaturalist with an unrestricted cash award of $250,000.

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