Every weekend, right after sunrise, Toni Espendi would walk from his home in Nanga Embaloh village, Kapuas Hulu regency, West Kalimantan to the nearby forest to look for birds. 

Once spotting one or more, he would aim and shoot the birds using a telephoto lens attached to his phone. Toni would later upload the photos into an app as part of a program called KehatiKu, an initiative from the scientific consultancy company Borneo Futures in which local residents can assist in wildlife monitoring.

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“Now we know the types of birds that roam in our village,” Toni said. “Birds that we previously couldn’t name, now we’re able to identify them.” 

Capturing bird photos has become a regular side gig for Toni and other villagers that not only generates income, but also contributes to biodiversity conservation through the practice of citizen science, where members of the general public are involved in collecting and analyzing data for scientific research.

The concept of involving non-scientists is not new, with the term first used in the late 1980s. But an analysis by OECD in 2025 found that there has been an increase in citizen science practices in the past decade across a wide range of research, albeit still dominantly seen in Western countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

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