Project
Nature Today (daily news from nature)
Over forty nature organizations, knowledge institutes, governments and nature conservation organizations publish daily at least two nature reports on current developments in nature on Naturetoday.com since 2008. They aim to bring nature in the news domain and to increase the interest in and support for nature in society. Naturetoday.com is visited by thousands of people on a daily basis and the nature reports have resulted in lots of media attention.
Since its founding in 2008, Nature Today has grown into the largest nature news platform in the Netherlands. Nature Today consists of a site in Dutch and an international site in English.
Objectives
By continuously and actively informing the general public and specific target groups on current developments in nature we will strengthen and increase their connectedness with, knowledge on and appreciation of nature. We hope that Naturetoday.com will make people more motivated to actively contribute to the monitoring, management and preservation of nature.
Methods
Experts from over forty organizations publish nature reports, each according to a fixed frequency. Naturetoday.com aims to publish at least two reports per day, year round. All organizations have a representative in the editorial board. The coordination of Naturetoday.com is done by the Earth Systems and Global Change Group of Wageningen University and the Foundation for Sustainable Development.
Experts base their reports on their knowledge, databases and thousands of observations that are submitted (often by volunteers) in the context of their ecological monitoring program. Nature reports are grouped in categories, for instance: butterflies, amphibians, reptiles, dragonflies, insects, mushrooms, plants, fishes, beach and sea, birds and mammals. Naturetoday.com also includes nature forecasts that are generated by the Nature’s Calendar project.
The content management system of Naturetoday.com contains a media module via which media can be actively informed when a newsworthy nature report has been or will be published. Furthermore, all nature reports are actively communicated via Twitter. People can subscribe to a daily or weekly emails newsletter. The newsletter contains the title and lead text of all nature reports published since the last newsletter.
Results
Naturetoday.com has published over ten thousand nature reports. All reports together form a big archive with a lot of information on nature in The Netherlands and worldwide that is freely accessible via the website. The nature reports have been read millions of times. Many nature reports have generated a lot of media attention. Over 18,500 people follow Twitter.com/NatureTodayNL, over 500 follow Twitter.com/NatureTodayINT, over 5.000 follow Facebook.com/naturetodaynl, around 4.000 follow Linkedin.com/company/naturetoday and over 31,000 people receive the Nature Today email newsletter.