Policy Reviews and Essays

Worldwide, volunteers are engaged in environmental monitoring, discovery, and experimentation. They are conducting community science. There is no doubt that society needs community science. There are economies of scale in having multiple data sets from multiple sites at a reduced cost. Some environments are running out of time, requiring an urgent response. Society requires more public interest and community scientists. Because local people are often the best placed to take action on local issues, they can complement, extend, refine, monitor, or initiate conventional science and do so with an ethic of care. This essay establishes, explores, and illustrates why we need more community science. It is illustrated with examples drawn from ornithology, water-quality monitoring and fisheries biology.