Context: Exchange of information is the key to local and global success for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. The more information, the better chance of success.

We propose to dramatically increase the flow and exchange of biodiversity information by crowdsourcing bird diversity observations from local residents and visitors (citizen-scientists), using the interactive eBird website to store, access and manage information and knowledge from citizen-scientists and to share the accumulated information locally and globally.

Bird diversity is widely used as a tool for environmental monitoring of terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems. This project envisions crowdsourcing bird diversity data on the eBird website for the environmental monitoring of PAs/ICCAS on the local community level and for directly linking these local communities with the global environment community of conservationists, scientists, eco-tourists and support initiatives in the GEF biodiversity and climate change focal areas, while (a) reducing dependency on expert-reliant interventions for informed decision-making, (b) encouraging the use of other environmental monitoring activities that currently lack a crowdsourcing mechanism (e.g. monitoring the diversity of plants, reptiles, invertebrates), and (c) improving livelihoods by promoting global awareness of Palau?s biodiversity especially in the eco-tourism market sector.