So, after another overnight greyhound bus ride (yes, I managed to sleep! Even if it was a bit squished) I arrived back in Los Angeles. This time though I am staying with a family which will hopefully give me a better experience of true L.A life. After heading up to my hosts house and settling in, I headed down to the Natural History Museum Los Angeles to meet with Miguel Ordenana and his co-workers from the citizen science team.

The projects they have going on are really cool and we discuss the similarities and differences between the U.K and U.S. Some of the problems faced are just the same. Like trying to get a more diverse array of people engaged with nature. Their focus on mapping urban wildlife through iNaturalist is cool and we talk about the different techniques used to get the data and people engaged and being citizen scientists. It’s really important to submit records wherever you are to your local recorder as I talk about in my vlog ‘Angelena and The Mammals’ as it helps monitoring efforts.

My favourite part of the museum was definitely the Nature Lab which is a room dedicated to people’s stories with wildlife and how we live side by side with animals even in urban environments. There is also a special bit for P22, a mountain lion, living in Griffith Park. The exhibit does a great job of getting the public to understand the issues faced by P22 and other mountain lions in the urban environment. Things like loss of habitat, habitat fragmentation and competition between the animals due to their smaller home range sizes. I really want to thank the team for meeting with me and taking time out to talk through stuff as well as showing me around. This has got me thinking of some great things we can do back in Nottingham!