From June 1st to June 30th, 2025:

Photograph the Earth!

Project: Wiki Loves Earth 2025
Type: Participation / Photo Sharing (not a job)
Organizations: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons
Location: anywhere in Canada

Wiki Loves Earth is an international photo contest of natural protected areas. All it takes to participate is to find a protected area nearby, photograph it, and submit a photo of it for the competition. You can win a prize and help Wikipedia!

Wiki Loves Earth is an international photographic competition to promote natural sites around the world, through Wikimedia projects (mainly Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons). Everybody can participate.

There are a lot of natural areas in all participating countries. The goal of Wiki Loves Earth is to encourage people to take pictures of those sites and to put them under a free license to allow others to access them through the Internet. To achieve that, an international contest is taking place. These pages present the Canadian part of this competition running in June 2025.

Contest

The goal of the contest is to put online as many pictures of recognized natural areas of Canada as possible during the month of June 2025 on Wikimedia Commons in order to share them, for free, with the world.

All pictures will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a free license, so they can be used freely around the world. Wikimedia Commons is an online repository hosting free multimedia content. Wikipedia relies solely on Commons as its media repository.

In June, you can upload as many pictures as you want of the recognized natural areas that you have visited. Pictures don't have to be taken in June, but must be uploaded that month to be considered for the contest. Starting in July, the contest's Canadian jury will begin evaluating the photographs to select the 10 best from Canada to be sent to the international jury.

Click here for more details on how to participate and for the lists of recognized protected natural areas in Canada.

Participate

You can participate to Wiki Loves Earth by taking pictures of recognized natural areas according to the lists and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons during the month of June 2025. For the picture to be eligible, you can take it anytime, as long as you have taken it yourself and you upload it to Commons in June by using the appropriate form.

Contest Rules

• You must take the picture yourself.
• The site depicted in the picture must be on the list of recognized protected areas of Canada.
• You must accept to put your picture under the license CC-BY-SA 4.0 (details).
• You must upload it to Wikimedia Commons by using the appropriate form for the contest and include the corresponding Wikidata Item ID (also known as a QID or Q-number).

Prizes

• First place: $100 CAD giftcard to a local camera supply store
• Second place: $75 CAD giftcard to a local camera supply store
• Third place: $50 CAD giftcard to a local camera supply store

How to participate

Decide what you want to photograph.

To take a photograph of a natural area and be eligible for the Wiki Loves Earth contest, you must first confirm that the area on the photograph is a recognized natural area of Canada. See the lists (on the right side). Different types of natural areas are eligible such as national parks, provincial parks, etc. If you already have photographs of a recognized natural area, it is not important when you took them, it is only important that you upload them between June 1st and June 30th, 2025 (in all Canadian timezones).

Take the photograph.

Here is some advice to improve your chances of winning the contest:

• Adjust your camera to the highest resolution. Take several photographs of the natural site. Later choose the best pictures or upload them all if they are all good.
• Remember what natural areas that you photographed because you will be required to identify them at the moment of uploading the pictures.
• Make sure that the photographs are pertinent to represent the natural areas. For example, a photograph of cars in the parking lot of a national park does not represent the natural park, but photographs of landscapes, wildlife, lakes, mountains, etc are all pertinent.
• Make sure to respect the rules of the park where you are.

Upload your pictures

• You must upload your pictures on Wikimedia Commons by using the appropriate form for the contest.
• You must include the Wikidata Item Number (also known as a QID or Q-number) corresponding to the protected area or use the direct upload link from the lists.

Lists of federal protected areas in Canada

• National Landmark
• National Capital Commission Parks
• National Parks of Canada
• National Marine Conservation Areas
• National Urban Park
• National Wildlife Areas
• Migratory Bird Sanctuaries

Lists of provincial and territorial protected areas in Canada

Choose a province or a territory:

• Alberta
• British Columbia
• Manitoba
• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland and Labrador
• Northwest Territories
• Nova Scotia
• Nunavut
• Prince Edward Island
• Ontario
• Quebec
• Saskatchewan
• Yukon
   

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The Social & Environmental Benefits
of Sharing

Freely available content—like that found on Wikipedia or distributed under Creative Commons (CC) licenses—offers substantial social and environmental benefits. These benefits ripple out across education, equity, innovation, and sustainability.

Environmental Benefits

• Reduction in Physical Resource Use
  • Open digital content reduces demand for physical media (books, DVDs, etc.), thereby cutting down on paper, plastics, ink, and shipping emissions.
  • It supports a more dematerialized economy, where knowledge doesn't require industrial-scale material production.
• Longer Lifespan and Reusability
  • Freely licensed content can be continually updated and reused without needing to print new editions or discard outdated materials.
• Supports Decentralized, Local Access
  • Digital access allows communities to educate and inform themselves without transporting goods from centralized publishers. Less transportation = fewer emissions.

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Social Benefits

• Democratization of Knowledge
  • Anyone with internet access can learn from Wikipedia, Khan Academy, OpenStax, etc. This reduces inequality in access to education and information.
• Support for Education Worldwide
  • Open Educational Resources (OERs) allow schools and universities—especially in low-income or underserved areas—to use high-quality materials without licensing fees.
• Cultural Empowerment and Preservation
  • Creative Commons enables marginalized groups to share and preserve their languages, stories, and knowledge systems without needing corporate permission or profit motives.
• Freedom of Expression and Innovation
  • Open licenses allow people to remix, adapt, and build upon existing works—leading to more cultural and scientific innovation.
• Resilience and Accessibility
  • Freely available knowledge can be hosted in decentralized ways, making it more resilient in crises. Think of Wikipedia access during natural disasters or political upheaval.

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Equity and Justice Dimensions

• Bridging the Global Digital Divide
  • Open content levels the playing field between wealthy and less wealthy nations, especially in education, journalism, and scientific research.
• Reduces Dependence on Corporate Gatekeepers
  • Freely licensed content shifts control from a few large media or publishing companies to individuals, communities, and nonprofits.

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Examples

• Wikipedia empowers citizen knowledge sharing in over 300 languages. Wikipedia.org | About

• Creative Commons licenses are used by platforms like Flickr, TED, MIT OpenCourseWare, and many independent artists and authors. More info: Creativecommons.org | ca.creativecommons.net

• OpenStreetMap (a free map of the world) helps disaster relief teams navigate during crises. Openstreetmap.org

• About Free content, libre content, libre information, free information en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_content | Free Content | Free Culture Movement | Free/libre and open-source software | Open content | Open data

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How can you help?

If you're looking to engage in or support initiatives with broad positive ripple effects, supporting open access projects — financially, politically, or through contributions — can be a powerful step.