What does $300,000 mean to the city of San Diego? Compared to a $6.4 billion budget, it’s a rounding error. For the San Diego Natural History Museum, it could mean the difference between survival and crisis.

In 2016, the first iNaturalist observation of a banana slug on Palomar Mountain was uploaded. Our invertebrate zoology team visited the mountain to look for this mysterious banana slug population. Spoiler alert: they found it. Now, they're trying to figure out whether it's a relict population, or an introduced one.

Our scientists are always working hard behind the scenes at the Museum, but another important aspect of The Nat’s scientific efforts involves studying wildlife in the natural environment—this is called fieldwork. Fieldwork can look very different for scientists depending on their discipline, but the main idea is to observe and study wildlife and plants out in nature.

Our scientists are always working hard behind the scenes at the Museum, but another important aspect of The Nat’s scientific efforts involves studying wildlife in the natural environment—this is called fieldwork. Fieldwork can look very different for scientists depending on their discipline, but the main idea is to observe and study wildlife and plants out in nature.

Nature is all around us in San Diego County: from coastal wetlands and canyon trails to neighborhood parks and open spaces. But access to nature and the healing benefits it can provide are not experienced equally across our region. We gathered feedback from over 500 people throughout San Diego County and the message was resoundingly clear: nature plays a vital role in our wellbeing. 

It’s been an exciting year—we brought you a new exhibition, and now, a new roof! We appreciate your patience during our partial closure, and with the new year we’re excited to bring back the activities you’ve been missing. To keep you on track with what’s going on in the next six months, we made this guide so you know what to look forward to.

We’re thrilled to announce our very first cohort of Climate Resilience Fellows in collaboration with San Diego Canyonlands. Ten fellows have been selected to help advance climate solutions in San Diego through training and skills development related to climate resilience, Nature-based Solutions, community outreach, habitat restoration, and more.

Scientific expeditions can be thought of as the first step in conservation—they are a way to gather baseline data on the plants and wildlife that exist in a specific area, which can then inform actions to protect it. Sierra de las Cacachilas is an extremely biodiverse and perhaps equally understudied area at the tip of the Baja California Peninsula, and our scientists visited this amazing place to learn all about it.

Most organizations in the Park are nonprofits struggling to balance their own budgets amid rising costs. We know and understand the City is struggling, but why make the nonprofits and local families struggle too? 

The Nat is proud to work alongside many amazing LGBTQIA+ scientists, volunteers, staff, and community members, and we’re celebrating their contributions to science. November 18 is LGBTQIA+ in STEM day, which uplifts the work of LGBTQIA+ people in science, technology, engineering, and math, and highlights some of the barriers they may face in these fields.